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- Convenors:
-
Oméya Desmazes
(Université Lyon III Jean Moulin)
Olga Peytavi (CIRADIRDIAC)
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- Format:
- Roundtable
- Stream:
- Water
- Location:
- UB-222 Facultat de Geografia i Història
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 1 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Madrid
Format/Structure
A roundtable moderated by the organizers : four speakers will address a set of questions shared in advance for a dynamic and inclusive discussion.
Long Abstract
This panel examines the relationships between populations, drinking water infrastructures, and managing institutions in postcolonial contexts, understood as spaces marked by enduring colonial power relations. It explores how daily supply practices reveal differentiated forms of access to drinking water and the persistence of colonial inequalities. By focusing on water, the panel explores how postcolonial analysis can shed light on infrastructural injustices, while also showing how water practices and conflicts enrich postcolonial critique and its conceptual frameworks.
It invites contributions that address, among other possibilities, the following themes:
• Day-to-day negotiation with institutional arrangements: This theme deconstructs the opposition between citizens and institutions by analyzing everyday interactions around multiple drinking water infrastructures and waters (Lemanski, 2019; Vogt & Walsh, 2021). These negotiations highlight the micropolitics of infrastructure and the entanglement of authority, legitimacy, and lived experience in postcolonial contexts (Le Meur, 2025).
• Hierarchization of knowledge and representations around drinking water: this theme questions how certain socio-technical knowledge about water are hierarchized and claimed in light of daily water supply practices (Kooy & Bakker, 2008). On the one hand, it questions the processes of legitimization or exclusion of certain knowledge about and, on the other hand, it allows to document how individuals inhabit their territory.
• Access and production of identities through drinking water infrastructures: this theme ultimately aims to explore how these different forms of access to drinking water can shape (or not) communities and identities (Domínguez-Guzmán et al., 2021). This may help to contextualize “decolonial” approaches applied to reflections on access to water.
Adopting a cross-disciplinary approach, the panel draws on academic, activist and artistic work from various postcolonial situations to document these dynamics and stimulate reflection on environmental justice.
Accepted papers
Session 1 Wednesday 1 July, 2026, -Contribution short abstract
This communication aims to contribute to a debate by comparing research on two metropolitan areas, in order to move beyond a specialization on water insecurity in cities in the Global South and to recognize forms of water insecurity in cities in the Global North.
Contribution long abstract
The issue of drinking water infrastructure is not limited to the consumption of beverage. While access to drinking water is obviously vital for human-beings, water is also used for other purposes such as washing oneselves, belongings, and clothes, in addition to sanitation. In this regard, I believe it is relevant to include these elements in the discussion on the challenges of living in a context of water scarcity.
My work is based on two case studies that contribute to our understanding of water scarcity in seemingly very different contexts. I will first discuss the case of Jakarta, a metropolis marked by the colonial legacy of its water supply network and its expansion since 1945. Fieldwork carried out aims to categorize the connected spaces, as well as the types of connections. The purpose here is to show how the connection methods overlap with the inherited colonial hierarchies, which is reinforced by the management methods imposed by the privatization of the water service from 1998 to 2022 (financing methods, stakeholders…). This work is put into perspective with a research conducted in Lyon, a so-called developed city. Here too, access to water is uneven. Based on a study of access to public showers (public or social establishments), the objective is to recognize the modalities of water insecurity: beneficiaries, volunteers, and structures are also part of social relationships marked by colonial legacies between those who help and those who are helped, renewed by the migration system, which reveals the reproduction of colonial relations.
Contribution short abstract
Gendered labour and time in water collection have often been measured through self-reported time estimates. By using GPS and feminist ethnography, I aim to examine how gendered mobilities, labour and time for water are shaped by spatio-temporal dynamics, intersectional identities and social norms.
Contribution long abstract
The daily provision of water for domestic use in rural northern Ghana is gendered. Here, water responsibilities fall on women due to gendered division of labour, structured by social reproduction and entrenched cultural norms. This labour demands significant time, physical effort, and mobility across multiple water collection points, often in distant locations. Yet, existing discourses on water and gender, including global assessments, have, over the years, relied on participant self-reported estimates to measure time spent on water-related activities. Beyond over- and/or underestimation, self-reported estimates overlook how temporal factors (daily, seasonal rhythms), spatial dynamics (water facilities' location across different landscapes), intersectional identities (age, gender, class), and social norms influence who moves, when they move, and how far they are willing to travel for water. Sensor-based mobility tracking, particularly Global Positioning System (GPS), provides another way to capture actual travel paths and waiting time. However, the use of GPS in gender-water research is limited. By combining GPS tracking with feminist ethnographic interviews and observations, this research maps gendered water activity spaces and uncovers real-time and mobility patterns that may otherwise remain overlooked in mainstream gender and water research or be distorted through self-reported estimates. Torsten Hägerstrand's time geography is an important framework to draw on here, while feminist geography situates men and women within power relations that shape gendered labour. The research contributes to broader discussion on gender and water labour, time, and mobility by engaging with African peripheral regions, where postcolonial histories shape everyday access to resources, including water.