Lucy Rodina
Fieldwork update: Elizabeth K. Dapaah in Accra, Ghana
I have been working in Ghana for the past two and half months on my master’s research project, which is focused on water governance and delivery in the city of Accra, Ghana. I began working from the 3rd of June under the external supervision of Prof. Jacob Songsore in the Department of Geography and Resource […]
New Publication: Rethinking the Human Right to Water
Morinville, C., & L. Rodina. (2013). Rethinking the Human Right to Water: Water Access and Dispossession in Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve. Geoforum, 49: 150-159. Abstract: This paper engages debates regarding the human right to water through an exploration the recent legal battle between San and Bakgalagadi and the government of Botswana regarding access to water in the […]
Congratulations, Leila!
Please join the EDGES team in congratulating Leila Harris, who was promoted to Associate Professor at the Institute for Resources Environment and Sustainability and the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, effective July 1, 2013. Having received her PhD degree from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in Geography with a minor in Development Studies and […]
Fieldwork update: Community Debrief in Site C, Khayelitsha, Cape Town
During a second visit to Cape Town, South Africa, with the invaluable help of Iliso Care Society, Lucy Rodina organized a community debrief event in Site C, Khayelitsha, to present some aspects of her research activities during 2012, including a preview of the CWGAR project, and to welcome feedback from the community. The event took […]
New Publication: CIGI Policy Brief
Improving Participatory Water Governance in Accra, Ghana SERIES: CIGI-AFRICA INITIATIVE POLICY BRIEF SERIES BY: LEILA M. HARRIS AND CYNTHIA MORINVILLE EDITED BY: SONYA ZIKIC RELEASE DATE: JUNE 4, 2013 The city of Accra faces challenges in providing its citizens with potable water due to rapid population growth, poverty and governance challenges. This policy brief highlights […]
Multiple SSHRC Awards for the EDGES team!
Several EDGES members have recently received Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) awards. Leila Harris was awarded the SSHRC Insight grant, titled “Experiences of Shifting Water Governance: Comparative Study of Water Access, Narrative, and Citizenship in Accra Ghana and Cape Town South Africa.” Sameer Shah and Rosie Simms received Masters funding. Sameer is starting […]
Zoonoses and emergence of new infectious diseases: biology meets anthropology
Sansonetti_Colloque2013 Collège de France (Chaire de Microbiologie et Maladies Infectieuses, Paris), PWIAS (University of British Columbia, Vancouver) and CNRS (Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale, Paris) are organizing a workshop, titled “Zoonoses and emergence of new infectious diseases: biology meets anthropology”, which will take place on June 10 and 11th. The goal of this workshop is to identify key factors in the […]
New Book: Contemporary Water Governance in the Global South
Contemporary Water Governance in the Global South: Scarcity, Marketization and Participation (May 20th, 2013) Edited by Leila M. Harris, Jacqueline A. Goldin, Christopher Sneddon The litany of alarming observations about water use and misuse is now familiar—over a billion people without access to safe drinking water; almost every major river dammed and diverted; increasing conflicts over the delivery […]
Fundraiser for Iliso Care Society
Fundraiser for Iliso, Mar 26 We would like to kindly invite you to a fund-raising event to help support one of our community partners in South Africa – the Iliso Care Society. Founded by Vivian Zilo, the Iliso Care Society is a registered non-profit organization and a registered Public Benefit Organization, working for the cause of poverty alleviation in Khayelitsha, Site […]
Margaret Morales joins Genomics Project at UBC
Margaret Morales recently started an internship with genomics.entrepreneurship@UBC. For more information on the project please click HERE. Margaret completed her Masters of Arts in Resource Management and Environmental Studies at UBC in Fall 2012, under the supervision of Dr. Gunilla Öberg and Dr. Leila Harris. More information on Margaret’s thesis is available HERE. Margaret’s work for […]
EDGES at the AAG 2013
Leila Harris and Cynthia Morinville will be presenting at the Association of American Geographers’ (AAG) Annual Meeting in April 2013. Leila Harris will be panelist in the The Right to Water: Theories and Practices (April 12th) session. She is also one of the organizers for Political Ecologies of the State I (April 11) and Political Ecologies of the State II (April 11) and […]
GRSJ Graduate Student Conference – Call for proposals
E(merge)nce: Expanding Interdisciplinary Approaches to Feminism Call for Proposals The Graduate Student Association at the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia invites graduate scholars to submit Abstracts for presentations at an interdisciplinary Graduate Student Conference entitled E(merge)nce: Expanding Interdisciplinary Approaches to Feminism. The conference will be held on March 4 from 10am-5pm at the Liu […]
EDGES at the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education
EDGES collaborators Megan Peloso (current IRES Masters student), Cynthia Morinville (IRES and EDGES alumna) and Andrea Marston (EDGES alumna, currently pursuing a PhD in Geography at the University of California, Berkeley) attended a workshop from December 3-5 hosted at the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education in Delft, Netherlands, aimed at developing a Water Alternatives Special […]
Welcome to Rosie Simms!
EDGES is pleased to welcome our newest member – Rosie Simms. Rosie is a Masters student working with Dr. Leila Harris. Her research will focus on drinking water monitoring and governance in a collaborative project with British Columbia First Nations communities. Rosie has a BA&Sc (Hons) Environment degree from McGill University, where her interests converged around Canadian […]
Congratulations to Cynthia Morinville!
Cynthia recently completed her Masters of Arts at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability. Her thesis, titled Beyond the Pipe: participation and alternative water provision in underserved areas of Accra, Ghana, can be accessed HERE. Cynthia is now working with Dr. Leila Harris and Dr. Karen Bakker at the Program on Water Governance. She also recently […]
Chapter 19
Participation’s limits: Tracing the Contours of Participatory Water Governance in Accra, Ghana, Cynthia Morinville and Leila Harris In the context of increasing focus on participatory resource governance, this chapter focuses on the case of Local Water Boards in underserved areas of Accra, Ghana. Our analysis suggests that the boards are serving several important functions, for instance […]
Chapter 18
Problems and Prospects for Genuine Participation in Water Governance in Turkey, Zeynep Kadirbeyoglu and Ekin Kurtic This chapter focuses on hydroelectric power plants (HPPs) and the decentralization of irrigation in Turkey to explore whether there is participation of local communities in the processes of decision-making and implementation. We find that the question of participation lies at […]
Chapter 17
Who is a Water User? The Politics of Gender in Egypt’s Water User Associations, Jessica Barnes Participation in institutions of participatory water management, including in water user associations (WUAs), is frequently patchy. Drawing on an ethnographic study of a project to establish WUAs in one of Egypt’s provinces, this chapter traces the roots of limited female […]
Chapter 16
The Participatory Paradigm: anathema, praise and confusion, Jacqueline Goldin Sites across the developing world bear the marks of failed projects touted as ‘participatory’ that have not fully, or meaningfully, involved stakeholders at multiple scales. This chapter isolates ‘four fatal flaws’ to interrogate the concept of participation: (1) participation is enmeshed with notions of decentralization and devolution, […]
Chapter 13
Privatization of water services in Kenya: supply strategies for the urban poor, O A K’Akumu This chapter assesses Kenya’s water privatization program, with particular focus on the efforts made to ensure that the needs of those living in informal settlements and of others with inadequate water provision are served. Privatization was pursued following years of poor […]
Chapter 12
(Dis)connecting the flow, steering the waters: Building hegemonies and ‘private water’ in Zambia, 1930s to the present, Hillary Waters This chapter examines four moments in Zambian history to argue hegemony is a dual process: bundling ideologies, institutions and context engenders power while representing water as isolated from this process provides hegemony the guise of objectivity. Investigating […]
Chapter 11
Variable Histories and Geographies of Marketization and Privatization, Leila M Harris Water privatization and marketization are unfolding in distinct ways in various places and regions. This paper traces the contours of the variable histories and geographies of privatization and marketization, including the history of private water provision in North America and Europe, and the contemporary push […]
Chapter 10
Framing the Debate on Water Marketization and Privatization, Leila M. Harris How and why have water marketization and privatization emerged as hegemonic? This chapter reviews the state of knowledge in this regard, suggesting that the ‘bundling’ of these concepts as necessarily linked has been crucial to their rapid uptake. Linking to other themes of the book, […]
Chapter 7
Abundance and Scarcity Amidst the Crisis of “Modern Water”: Changing Water-Energy Nexus in Turkey, Sinan Erensu The world of hydropower is in transition: as large dams have lost their credibility, run-of-the-river small hydropower plants (SHPs) are gaining currency thanks to their perceived eco-friendliness in post-carbon economy. Focusing on Turkey’s green energy drive, this chapter looks at […]
Chapter 6
Water Scarcity and the Colonial State: the emergence of a Hydraulic Bureaucracy in Southwestern Matabeleland, Southern Rhodesia, 1964 -1972 , Muchaparara Musemwa This chapter examines how water was institutionalized in southwestern Matabeleland, 1964-1972, Rhodesia, following a devastating drought in 1964-65 and how ‘water scarcity’ became a dominant idea in this specific locale. This drought triggered a ‘crisis’ condition […]
Chapter 5
Tensions in Narratives and Lived Realities of Water Crisis in Damascus, Basil Mahayni This chapter analyzes narratives of water crisis in Damascus, and considers these against Syria’s modernization projects of the last forty years. Rather than isolating water crises as specific to Damascus, the chapter argues that a broader set of conditions unfolding across time throughout Syria […]
Chapter 4
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 […]
Chapter 3
Response from Biophysical and Engineering Perspectives, Lawrence Baker The core themes of this book – scarcity, marketization, and participation – in the context of water governance – cannot be fully understood without the perspectives of science and technology. On one hand, technocratic hegemonies have often had unfortunate consequences. On the other, emerging information technologies offer the […]
Chapter 2
Water, Governance, and Hegemony, Chris Sneddon This chapter examines the rise of a variety of concepts—scarcity, marketization and participation— that have assumed hegemonic status within discourses and practices associated with water governance. The chapter’s aim is to provide a common frame of reference for how subsequent chapters treat the notion of hegemonic concept in the water […]
Chapter 1
Introduction, Jacqui Goldin, Chris Sneddon, Leila Harris This chapter introduces key themes of interest, as well as contributions from the chapters and sections of the book.
New Book: Contemporary Water Governance in the Global South
“Contemporary Water Governance in the Global South: Scarcity, Marketization, Participation“, edited by Leila Harris, Jacqueline Goldin and Chris Sneddon, is coming out on May 15, 2013. The litany of alarming observations about water use and misuse is now familiar—over a billion people without access to safe drinking water; almost every major river dammed and diverted; increasing […]
EDGES Welcomes Fatima Hasanain!
Fatima Hasanain from the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia is joining the EDGES Team. Fatima is a Master’s student working with Dr Leila Harris on issues of gender and representation within certification standards applied to cocoa bean production. More specifically, she is using feminist critical discourse analysis to […]
Congratulations to Margaret Morales!
Margaret successfully defended her thesis on September 17th, 2012, and is now officially a graduate of UBC! Her thesis, ‘Citizenshit – the Right to Flush: Sewage Management and its Meanings in Villa Lamadrid, Buenos Aires, Argentina,’ is now available on Circle – The University of British Columbia’s digital repository for research. Below is an abstract of her […]
New Publication: “Sustainable Development at Universities: New Horizons”
The International Development Research Network (IDRN), including several members of EDGES – Leila Harris, Cynthia Morinville, Lucy Rodina and Megan Peloso – is a contributor on a newly published book, titled “Sustainable Development at Universities: New Horizons”. The chapter, “Bridging Disciplinary and Professional Divides to Improve International Development Research at Universities”, investigates the challenges facing university research […]
EDGES Welcomes a New Masters Student from Ghana
EDGES is very pleased to welcome Elizabeth K. Dapaah to the team! Elizabeth has a Bachelor of Arts Degree (Hons) in Geography and Resource Development with Political Science from the University of Ghana – Legon and a certificate in Disaster Risk Reduction in Urban Areas and Community Information Base for Environmental Management (EHM). Elizabeth will be […]
Fieldwork Update: Cynthia Morinville in Accra, Ghana
Once again, I partnered with Amba Duaa Mensah Forson and with a little more than half of the summer behind us (already!), we are very pleased with the progress we were able to make on the research front. This field season was divided into two phases. Most of our efforts in June were directed towards […]
Leila Harris Receives PWAIS Fellowship for Africa Project
Leila Harris has recently been awarded a “Visiting Scholar Abroad” fellowship from the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies for work on water access and governance in South Africa. Awardees are chosen for ‘outstanding and transformative research which will have an impact in terms of addressing an important science or humanities issue in the host […]
Fieldwork Update: Lucy Rodina in Cape Town, South Africa
As part of my Masters program, I (just) completed a 2 and a half-month field season in Cape Town, South Africa from mid-May to the end of July 2012. I arrived on May 12th and met with the Anthropology of Water research group (AOW) a few days later. AOW is a working group at the […]
GE3LS project update: Healthy Watersheds and Metagenomics
Left to right: Leila Harris, Karen Bakker, Gemma Dunn The GE3LS team is a group of researchers working on genomics-related ethical, economic, environmental, legal and social aspects of the Genome Canada funded project Applied Metagenomics of the Watershed Microbiome. The GE3LS team is bi-coastal, with teams from both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of Canada. Leila Harris, […]
New publication now available: Leila Harris, “State as Socio-Natural Effect”
Harris, L. (2012). State as Socio-Natural Effect: Variable and Emergent Geographies of the State in Southeastern Turkey. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 32(1), 25-39. Abstract: This article draws on recent interventions related to everyday states, state-natures, and political ecologies of the state, as well as Timothy Mitchell’s concept of “state as effect,” […]
EDGES Presents “Water into Wine”: Movie Screening and Social, March 29
The EDGES research collaborative kindly invites everyone to our social event next week. We will be showing Even the Rain and a short documentary, created by one of our members, Margaret Morales. You will also hear short presentations introducing our work. We will have snacks and wine to turn our event into a true celebration! Thursday, March […]
EDGES Welcomes Lyla Mehta at UBC
Lyla Mehta is visiting UBC next week to give a couple of talks. Lyla Mehta is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex and an Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian University of Life sciences. She is a sociologist and her work has focussed on the politics of water and sanitation, scarcity and forced […]
World Water Day 2012 – Vancouver public events
The Program on Water Governance is collaborating with a number of other organizations to organize a series of public events in celebration of UN World Water Day, March 22, 2012. These events are part of Downstream: Re-imagining Water, a research creation project on water politics. The upcoming public events include: Wednesday evening, March 21, 2012 – Roundhouse Community Centre […]
EDGES at the AAG Annual Meeting in New York, Feb 24-28th
EDGES is very proud to announce that Dr. Leila Harris, Cynthia Morinville and Andrea Marston will be presenting at the AAG Annual Meeting this week in New York. The AAG AM is an interdisciplinary forum that features a wide range of topics, including Political Geography, Natural Hazards, Climate Change, Social Justice and many more. Dr. Harris […]
Upcoming Events, February and March 2012
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Vancouver, BC, February 16-20, 2012. Session 1: Friday February 17, 2012 12:00-12:45pm (lunchtime topical lecture) Topic: Water Privatization, Urbanization and Development Speaker: Karen Bakker (UBC) Sponsor: AAAS Session 2: Friday February 17, 2012 1:30-4:30pm (afternoon panel session) Topic: Links and trade-offs between water, energy and food […]
Darlene Seto on Studying Gender and Sustainability
Darlene Seto, MA from the IRES program at UBC, posted an insightful blog on the AASHE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education) website, investigating how gender can play a role for sustainability students. Darlene looks at gender from a twofold perspective: as a concern in environment-related research and as a concern for […]
New publication now available: Leila Harris, “Salts, Soils and (un)sustainabilities?
Harris, L. (2011). “Salts, Soils and (un)sustainabilities? Analyzing Narratives of Environmental Change in Southeastern Turkey” in D. Davis and E. Burke III, Environmental Imaginaries of the Middle East, University of Ohio Press, 192-217. Book description: The landscapes of the Middle East have captured our imaginations throughout history. Images of endless golden dunes, camel caravans, isolated desert oases, […]
FIELD WORK UPDATE: Danika Kleiber’s Data collection experience in the Central Philippines
Pie Charts Are Yummy I know what you’re thinking. It’s just a freaking pie chart, why should that take so long? Well my friends this pie chart represents 600 interviews of people in 12 communities, and converting answers like “10 pieces of fish every other friday” into numeric data takes a bit of time. […]
FIELD WORK UPDATE: Cecilia Roa in Quito, Ecuador
Regional workshop on watershed management and restoration in the Andes – Quito, January 23-27 2012 FONAG, the organization that protects the watersheds that supply water for the city of Quito, hosted a workshop with the participation and coordination of the international program of the US Forest Service. The workshop focused on monitoring mechanisms of the […]
Field Work Update: Margaret Morales in Buenos Aires, Argentina
Margaret Morales is conducting fieldwork in Villa Lamadrid, a small community in Greater Buenos Aires, Argentina. Though the community is on the municipal water supply system, they are part of the over 3.5million people in the metropolitan area living without access to municipal sanitation and wastewater management services. The lack of wastewater management services to […]
New publication now available, Neo(liberal) citizens of Europe: politics, scales, and visibilities of environmental citizenship in contemporary Turkey
Harris, L. (2011). Neo(liberal) citizens of Europe: politics, scales, and visibilities of environmental citizenship in contemporary Turkey. Citizenship Studies, 15(6-7), 837-859. Abstract: The aim of this article is to critically interrogate articulations of environmental citizenship in contemporary Turkey. Specifically, I analyse articulations of environmental citizenship through citizen and activist narratives taken from interviews and focus […]
FIELD WORK UPDATE: Cecilia Roa at a Water Justice meeting in Cusco
The third meeting of the International Alliance for Water Justice took place in Cusco (Peru), Nov 3-5, 2011. This Alliance is coordinated by Wageningen University and this year the meeting focused around strategies to influence water policy making across scales. Twenty five researchers from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Denmark, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, The United […]
EDGES welcomes new students!
Welcome to Lucy Rodina, Megan Peloso, and Phil Torio! Lucy is a Masters student, working on water governance in Cape Town, South Africa. With a specific focus on informal settlements, Lucy will be investigating the mechanisms of public engagement related to water governance and how the human right to water is invoked in daily and […]
L. Harris and EDGES team awarded grant from CIGI – Africa Initiative
Earlier this month the EDGES team was awarded a CIGI – Africa Initiative grant. L. Harris’s proposal, titled “Contextual and policy dimensions of Extending Water Access: Cape Town and Accra”, was among a handful projects, selected out of 362 submissions. The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) is an independent, non-partisan think tank on international […]
Interview with Prof. Leila Harris for the CFIS online Annual Report
Prof. Harris was interviewed for the CFIS online Annual Report which is due mid-September. To see the video, plese click HERE. Leila Harris describes her research in the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability and the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies. She examines water access and politics in Turkey and Middle East, exploring water […]
UNECE Workshop on Equitable and Affordable access to Water, Geneva, July 2011
In July, 2011, Dr. Leila Harris attended the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) workshop “Equitable and affordable access to water”. Among the attendees were half a dozen academic participants and country representatives from different ministries in Europe responsible for water provision/access, as well as ministries that deal with minority issues. Since the themes […]
Field work update: Andrea Marston in Cochabamba, Bolivia
Cochabamba, Bolivia. Summer 2011 Andrea acompaning Bolivian students during their MA practice. Andrea Marston is studying water use and governance in the southern, peri-urban region of Cochabamba, Bolivia, during summer 2011. Cochabamba’s public water service does not yet extend into this part of the city,which has experienced rapid urbanization in the last several decades,but […]