Presentation short abstract

By nurturing a conversation between political ecology of water with philosophy of science, and literature, I illustrate how recognising water as a constellation of matter, and not as one "physical thing”, allows for a deeper engagement with its material politics in the majority world.

Presentation long abstract

The very question “what is water” (Linton, 2010) continues to shape research into its ontological politics. The progression towards a plural understanding of water, from a technoscientific and depoliticized H20 to hydrosocial water(s), is a major development in critical social sciences. Yet, the dominant conceptualisation continues to frame water as a singular entity – “a physical thing” (Bakker, 2004:49) – and its materiality expressed through the effects produced from the social entanglement with waters flows and fluxes.

I interrogate questions of materiality of water in the majority world by nurturing a conversation between political ecology of water with philosophy of science, and literature. Borrowing from Hasok Chang’s “epistemic pluralism” (2012) which unsettles the scientific consensus around stability of H20 through historiographical interrogation, and Sukumar Ray’s (1920) imaginative use of plural waters in his short play, Abak Jalpan ( A Strange Drink of Water), as a critique of colonial middle class society, I argue for a constitutive materiality of water, where recognising water as a constellation of matter, and not as one “physical thing”, allows for a deeper engagement with its material politics in the majority world. I empirically illustrate this point by exploring the debate on Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) in drinking water quality in urban India where water is defined by the desire for specific matter and how technologies to produce such outcomes animates wider politics of urban water governance.