Paper short abstract:

Wherever SODIS (solar disinfection of drinking water) technologies have been introduced, user compliance has varied greatly, anything from 25% to 95%. Clearly, these interventions must be made in conjunction with critical social research. But how exactly would such a collaboration work in practice?

Paper long abstract:

The Solar Disinfection of Drinking Water (SODIS) is a simple and effective way of cutting down on disease. Yet, in the contexts in which SODIS technologies have been introduced, user compliance has varied greatly, from as little as 25% to as much as 95%. Clearly, there is more to be learnt from these interventions if this work were to be carried out in conjunction with critical social research.

Ethnographic fieldwork has the potential to reveal how social inequalities are created and contested through conflicts over water. In the SODIS case, the issues may range from the very manner in which the technology enters the field (as a 'clinical trial' of sorts? or by policy directive? or at the initiative of a people's movement?), to the larger national and global political economic currents within which daily struggles over water take place.

While the complementarity of the technical and the ethnographic is not in doubt, there are lingering questions - that this paper will attempt to enumerate -- about how the collaboration is to be effected.