Paper short abstract:

Water infrastructure governs human and other species' relations within ecosystems. Is it possible, through ethical design, to materialise and thus to promote principles of social and ecological justice? Can democracy and notions of the State be extended beyond human communities?

Paper long abstract:

As Wittfogel established in 1957, there is an intimate relationship between political power and the ownership and control of water. The capacity to direct fluid 'life' is literally essential to the functioning of the State. Water infrastructure materialises the process of governance, imposing onto human and non-human systems particular priorities about whose needs and interests will be met - and whose will not.

Drawing on ethical theories of human-non-human relations, and long-term research on rivers in Queensland, this paper explores how the materialities of water infrastructure constitute interspecies relations within ecosystems. Conventionally, ruled by dominant concepts of dualism, such infrastructure is envisaged as a tool of 'dominion' through which Nature/the non-human is directed (ie governed) to provide 'environmental services' for Culture/humankind. The result is unsustainable water use practices that override not only the needs and interests of less powerful human groups, but those of other, non-human communities.

This paper suggests that the achievement of more reciprocal and sustainable practices depends upon understanding how such material culture expresses and inculcates meanings, and a conscious effort to promote less anthropocentric infrastructural design. By doing so, can the State uphold and enact principles of social and ecological justice? Is it possible to 're-imagine communities' to conceive of a State that extends notions of democracy beyond human agency and interests? And can such paradigmatic changes be carried beyond and between States, for example by EU Directives, or the Principles for Water currently being composed by the UN?