Producing Crisis: Hegemonic Debates and Mediations and Representations of Water Scarcity, Basil Mahayni

This chapter interrogates the common-sense notion of increasing freshwater scarcity. While water quantity, quality, and hydrological systems become increasingly uncertain in some contexts, there is nonetheless a range of tensions that emerge through an investigation of hegemonic representations of water scarcity. Providing a sense of how water scarcity is represented in water policy, the chapter argues that conceptualizations of water scarcity often are rooted in politics, and regularly obscure inequalities in water access or who is most affected by particular ‘crises’ in the water realm.  Key concepts and contributions to these debates are also examined.