Table Of ContentThe Biopolitics of Water
Biopolitics refers to a form of politics concerned with administering and
regulating the conditions of life at an aggregated level of populations. This
book provides a biopolitical perspective on water governance and its
effects. It draws on the work of Foucault to explore how notions of scar-
city are used in strategies of governance and how such governance differ-
entiates between different populations. Furthermore, the author
investigates what such biopolitical regulation means for people’s lifestyles
and the way they understand themselves and their moral responsibilities as
humans, individuals, and citizens.
The book begins by investigating the global water agenda, with a par-
ticular emphasis on its focus on water for basic needs, and provides
different examples of hydromentalities around the world. It also presents
rich empirical details of one local case in South Africa. By carefully
exploring the water ‘stories’ of water users, the book provides new per-
spectives on the relationship between water and power. Additionally, it
offers an innovative methodological framework through which we can
study the workings of governance more generally, and water governance
specifically. It thereby contributes to the scholarship on water governance
in relation to how water governance and technologies are part of produc-
ing subjectivities, notions of life and lifestyles and, more specifically, how
the global water agenda can work so as to produce, or further entrench,
distinctions between different lives and lifestyles. Ultimately, differences
between individuals and populations that are produced as an effect of
water governance are assessed in relation to social sustainability.
Sofie Hellberg is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Gothen-
burg, Sweden and the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
Earthscan Studies in Water Resource Management
Transboundary Water Governance and International Actors in South Asia
The Ganges–Brahmaputra–Meghna Basin
Paula Hanasz
The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and the Nile Basin
Implications for transboundary water cooperation
Edited by Zeray Yihdego, Alistair Rieu- Clarke and Ana Elisa Cascão
Freshwater Ecosystems in Protected Areas
Conservation and management
Edited by Max C. Finlayson, Jamie Pittock and Angela Arthington
Participation for Effective Environmental Governance
Evidence from European Water Framework Directive Implementation
Edited by Elisa Kochskämper, Edward Challies, Nicolas W. Jager and
Jens Newig
China’s International Transboundary Rivers
Politics, Security and Diplomacy of Shared Water Resources
Lei Xie and Jia Shaofeng
Urban Water Sustainability
Constructing Infrastructure for Cities and Nature
Sarah Bell
The Biopolitics of Water
Governance, Scarcity and Populations
Sofie Hellberg
For more information and to view forthcoming titles in this series, please
visit the Routledge website: www.routledge.com/books/series/ECWRM/
The Biopolitics of Water
Governance, Scarcity and Populations
Sofie Hellberg
First published 2018
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2018 Sofie Hellberg
The right of Sofie Hellberg to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978-1-138-74075-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-18325-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
To my sons Hannes and Hjalmar and their father, my partner,
Beniamin.
Contents
List of acronyms and abbreviations viii
1 The power and politics of water 1
2 (Green) governmentality and biopolitics 25
3 Global water governance: scarcity, populations,
distinctions 60
4 Hydromentalities 95
5 Understanding biopolitical ‘effects’ locally: life(styles),
subjectivities, and moral obligations 133
6 The biopolitics of water 170
Index 183
Acronyms and abbreviations
CBD Convention on Biological Diversity (United Nations)
EBM Ecosystem- based Management
EWS eThekwini Water and Sanitation
FBW Free Basic Water
GWG Global Water Governance
GWP Global Water Partnership
IDP Integrated Development Plan
IWA International Water Association
IWRM Integrated Water Resources Management
LCPD Litres per Capita Per Day
MDG Millennium Development Goal
MT Mvula Trust
NGO Non- Governmental Organization
NP Nationalist Party (South Africa)
POAT Plan de Ordenamiento Ambiental Territorial/Environmental
zoning plan for watersheds (Paraguay)
PPP Public–Private Partnerships
RDP Reconstruction and Development Programme
SDG Sustainable Development Goal
SNWT South–North Water Transfer (China)
UN United Nations
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNEP United Nations Environmental Programme
UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organ-
ization
WHO World Health Organization
WRG Water Resources Group
WRI World Resources Institute
WWDR World Water Development Report
ZAR South African Rand
1 The power and politics of water
The emotion of water and the access to it … I have had women who put
their crying baby on the phone. I have had women hysterical. I have had
people coming in here with guns and threatened to shoot me. I have had
staff shot at and killed for water. So I know when you deprive somebody
of water how emotionally.… There is this thing in you: it is like you close
off somebody’s air supply. That fight for water and air. Because five
minutes with no air and five days without water you are dead. Five weeks
with no food. So the famous five.… But it is the minutes and the days,
you know, in five days: if I haven’t had water I am dead. That triggers
something in people, some irrationality. So it’s highly emotive. And
people play on that. So you’ve got a very strong emotion that you could
use. It’s like a feeling of injustice almost. So the manipulative, the anar-
chists, the clever ones try and play on that. I am in this game and I have
seen it.
The above quotation is an excerpt from an interview with the then
(2009) Head of Water and Sanitation (EWS) in eThekwini municipality,
South Africa, and it is a good illustration of some of the main themes of
this book. The quotation revolves around strong emotions that surround
water because it is a necessity for survival. It highlights the contestations
and tensions around its distribution. It illustrates, through the example
of hysterical women, how water is gendered. It also tells a particular
story of how emotions – despite the fact that they are stirred by the fight
for survival – are associated with irrationality. It indicates how resistance
against perceived injustices in water distribution are seen as something
that is used strategically for political purposes. Finally, it signals that
what the EWS stands for, in contrast to the emotive and political, is the
rational.
In this book the representation of water and its functions, and its
management and allocation, are addressed as inherently political and,
more specifically, biopolitical. This means that water management
systems are critically scrutinized in terms of their attempts at governing
life and the distinctions they make between different forms of lives, as
well as what such ways of governing mean for people’s lifestyles and
