Knowledge Others, Others’ Knowledge
The Need for a New Epistemology of Water
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v3i2.226Keywords:
Water, Epistemology, Rivers, Feminist Methods, Scientific MethodsAbstract
This paper examines the ways in which knowledge about water has conventionally been generated by modern water scientists and illuminates how this approach leaves out the diverse “ways of knowing” water and how scientism creates a trap of concrete evidential certainty. Through the example of a failed conversation, it questions the basic epistemological underpinnings of understanding water in modern scientific inquiries—the means of knowing rivers, and how they conflict with feminist epistemologies and fail to account for the “knowledge others” and “others’ knowledge”. The paper concludes with observations on why we need new epistemologies of water in the Anthropocene.
Downloads
Metrics
References
Baghel, R., L. Stepan, and J. Hill. 2017. Water, Knowledge and the Environment in Asia: Epistemologies, Practices and Locales. London: Earthscan.
Barry, A., and G. Born. 2013. Interdisciplinarity: Reconfigurations of the Social and Natural Sciences. London: Routledge.
Brouwers, R. 2013. “Revisiting Gender Mainstreaming in International Development. Goodbye to an Illusionary Strategy.” Working Paper Series/General Series, International Institute of Sciences, 556: 1–36. https://repub.eur.nl/pub/39504/wp556.pdf.
Castree, N. 2005. Nature. Abbingdon: Routledge.
Castree, N. 2013. Making Sense of Nature: Representation, Politics and Democracy. New York: Routledge.
Code, L. 1981. “Is the Sex of the Knower Epistemologically Significant?” Metaphilosophy 12 (3–4): 267–276. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9973.1981.tb00760.x.
Code, L. 2014. “Feminist Epistemology and the Politics of Knowledge: Questions of Marginality.” In The SAGE Handbook of Feminist Theory, edited by M. Evans, C. Hemmings, M. Henry, H. Johnstone, S. Madhok, A. Plomien, and S. Wearing, 9–25. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
D’Souza, R. 2007. Drowned and Damned: Colonial Capitalism and Flood Control in Eastern India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Daly, M. 2005. “Gender Mainstreaming in Theory and Practice.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 12 (3l): 433–450. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxi023
de Sousa Santos, B. 2014. Epistemologies of the South: Justice against Epistemicide. New York: Routledge.
de Sousa Santos, B. 2016. “Epistemologies of the South and the Future.” From the European South 1: 17–29.
Eerdewijk, A., and T. Davids. 2014. “Escaping the Mythical Beast: Gender Mainstreaming Reconceptualised.” Journal of International Development 26 (3): 303–316. https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.2947.
Ekers, M., and A. Loftus. 2012. “Revitalizing the Production of Nature Thesis: A Gramscian Turn?” Progress in Human Geography 37 (2): 234–252. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132512448831.
Harding, S. 1986. The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Jasanoff, S. 2004. “Ordering Knowledge, Ordering Society.” In States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and Social Order, edited by S. Jasanoff, 13–45. London: Routledge.
Lahiri-Dutt, K. 1999. “Imagining Rivers.” Economic and Political Weekly 35 (27): 2395–2397. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4409472.
Lahiri-Dutt, K. 2006. Fluid Bonds: Views on Gender and Water. Kolkata: Stree.
Lahiri-Dutt, K. 2015. “Towards a More Comprehensive Understanding of Rivers.” In Living Rivers, Dying Rivers, edited by R. Iyer, 421–434. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Lave, R. 2015. “The Future of Socio-ecological Expertise.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 105 (2): 244–252.
Linton, J. 2010. What Is Water? The History of a Modern Abstraction. Vancouver: UBC Press.
Massey, D. 2005. For Space. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
Mehta, L., A. Huff, and J. Allouche. 2019. “The New Politics and Geographies of Scarcity.” Geoforum 101 (May): 222–230. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.10.027.
Mukhopadhyay, M. 2014. “Mainstreaming Gender or Reconstituting the Mainstream? Gender Knowledge in Development.” Journal of International Development 26 (3): 356–367. https://doi.org/10.1002/jid.2946.
Plewa, T. M. 2010. “Rivers.” In Encyclopedia of Geography, edited by B. Warf, 2472–2477. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
Roberts, L., and K. Philips. 2019. Multidisciplinary Understandings of Human–Water Relationships. London: Earthscan.
Schmidt, J. J. 2017. Water: Abundance, Scarcity and Security in the Age of Humanity. New York: New York University Press.
Schumm, S. A. 1977. The Fluvial System. New York and London: John Wiley & Sons.
Sjolander-Lindqvist, A. 2005. “Conflicting Perspectives on Water in a Swedish Railway Tunnel Project.” Environmental Values 14 (2): 221–239.
Staudt, K. 2003. “Gender Mainstreaming: Conceptual Links to Institutional Machineries.” In Mainstreaming Gender, Democratizing the State? National Machineries, edited by S. M. Rai, 40–66. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
Strang, V. 2010. “Water, Culture and Power: Anthropological Perspectives from ‘Down Under’.” Insights, Journal of the Institute of Advanced Study 3 (4): 2–26.
Stuart, N. 2007. “Technology and Epistemology: Environmental Mentalities and Urban Water Usage.” Environmental Values 16 (4): 417–431. https://doi.org/10.3197/096327107X243213.
Swyngedouw, E. 2006. “Circulations and Metabolisms: (Hybrid) Natures and (Cyborg) Cities.” Science as Culture 15 (2): 105–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/09505430600707970.
Walby, S. 2005. “Gender Mainstreaming: Productive Tensions in Theory and Practice.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society 12 (3): 321–343. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxi018.
Additional Files
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright
The author(s) retain copyright on work published by INSEE unless specified otherwise.
Licensing and publishing rights
Author(s) of work published by INSEE are required to transfer non-exclusive publishing right to INSEE of the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose.
Authors who publish in Ecology, Economy and Society will release their articles under the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license. This license allows anyone to copy and distribute the article for non-commercial purposes provided that appropriate attribution is given.
For details of the rights that the authors grant users of their work, see the "human-readable summary" of the license, with a link to the full license. (Note that "you" refers to a user, not an author, in the summary.)
The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the Ecology, Economy and Society—the INSEE Journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.
In case of re-publishing a previously published work, author may note that earlier publication may have taken place a license different from Creative Commons. In all such cases of re-publishing, we advise the authors to consult the applicable licence at article level.
