Papers by Afton Clarke-Sather
This forum responds to recent calls to hypothesize a geopolitics of the Anthropocene by examining... more This forum responds to recent calls to hypothesize a geopolitics of the Anthropocene by examining how our notions of geopolitics of water may shift in the context of this new and, at times, divisive framework. The Anthropocene describes the geological epoch in which humans are the dominant actor in the global environmental system and has been a concept that is not without controversy. Taking the Anthropocene as an epistemological divergence where nature can no longer be viewed as separate from humanity, this forum asks how moving away from understanding hydraulic systems as essentially stable to understanding them as unstable and profoundly influenced by humans changes our understanding ofthe geopolitics of water. Collectively the contributions to this forum illustrate that formulating a water geopolitics of the Anthropocene requires 1) moving beyond a focus on fluvial flows to consider other forms of water; 2) broadening our understanding of the actors involved in water geopolitics; 3) examining new geopolitical tactics, particularly those grounded in law; 4) engaging critically with new and emerging forms of visualization and representation in the geopolitics of water, and; 5) examining how the notion of the Anthropocene has been used towards geopolitical ends and worked to elide different positionalities.
Geopolitics, 2017
This forum responds to recent calls to hypothesize a geopolitics of the Anthropocene by examining... more This forum responds to recent calls to hypothesize a geopolitics of the Anthropocene by examining how our notions of geopolitics of water may shift in the context of this new and, at times, divisive framework. The Anthropocene describes the geological epoch in which humans are the dominant actor in the global environmental system and has been a concept that is not without controversy. Taking the Anthropocene as an epistemological divergence where nature can no longer be viewed as separate from humanity, this forum asks how moving away from understanding hydraulic systems as essentially stable to understanding them as unstable and profoundly influenced by humans changes our understanding of the geopolitics of water. Collectively the contributions to this forum illustrate that formulating a water geopolitics of the Anthropocene requires 1) moving beyond a focus on fluvial flows to consider other forms of water; 2) broadening our understanding of the actors involved in water geopolitics; 3) examining new geopolitical tactics, particularly those grounded in law; 4) engaging critically with new and emerging forms of visualization and representation in the geopolitics of water, and; 5) examining how the notion of the Anthropocene has been used towards geopolitical ends and worked to elide different positionalities.
A B S T R A C T Between 2005 and 2010 state actors constructed a centralized piped water system t... more A B S T R A C T Between 2005 and 2010 state actors constructed a centralized piped water system to serve 50,000 rural households in a semi-arid region of Northwest China. However, the intended beneficiaries of this project largely chose not to connect the system, and were often ambivalent towards its success. I explain this ambivalence through Foucault's (2007) engagement with the role of the aleatory in the formation of modern state power. The aleatory is those elements of risk, chance and contingency that cannot be fully controlled , but can be calculated and the adverse effects thereof mitigated through what Foucault calls apparatuses of security. Managing the aleatory was a central moment in the emergence of governmentality as a means of exercising state power. Peasants' ambivalence towards centralized piped water originates in the success of a previous state-backed improved rainwater-harvesting program that has significantly reduced peasants' risk of water shortage and placed households in control of risks of water shortage. By improving peasants' ability to cope with drought, rainwater harvesting decentralized power over and knowledge about household water resources. In contrast, piped water has centralized both power over water, and the risk of water shortage in the hands of state actors, but has interacted with local water markets in ways that empower households to reduce the risk of water shortage from both natural sources and the state. The shifting reconfigurations of the risk of water shortages explain how state power has been extended through water management despite the population's selective engagement with piped water. Introduction In 2005, the Anding District Water Bureau (ADWB) began a project to provide piped drinking water to 50,000 rural households in the semi-arid Anding District of Gansu, China. Five years later as the project came towards the targeted completion date, only 31% of the intended beneficiaries had signed up to connect to the piped network, while 41% planned to connect but had not yet connected , primarily for financial reasons. The remaining 28% had no intention of connecting. This conjuncture, that a large number of people in a water scarce region would choose not to connect to running water, can be explained by examining the political ecology of state power and domestic water provision through the lens of Foucault's analysis of the aleatory – those events which arises from chance, risk, or contingency. The aleatory formed a central moment in Foucault's (2007) genealogy of the rise of governmentality as a new technology of state power in the modern era and is a helpful tool in our understanding of political ecologies of state power. In this study I demonstrate that peasant indifference to state backed running water can be more aptly thought of as selective engagement with state development projects and explained through a shifting political economy of risk of domestic water shortages that arose from state environmental governance. By the time the running water project described above began, the ADWB had been governing the risk of domestic water shortage through the decentralized technology of household-based rainwater harvesting for about 10 years. Rainwater harvesting and piped water can be seen as two very different approaches to the expression of state power over the bio-physical resource of water, risk of water scarcity, and knowledge surrounding water management. Rainwater harvesting can be understood in terms of what Foucault called apparatuses of security, which are fundamentally centrifugal forms of power that gave households greater control over potential water shortages. Piped water, in contrast, concentrated risks of water shortage in a state-run system, and can be understood in terms of juridical and disciplinary forms of power that are fundamentally centripetal. The politics of drinking water in the Anding District provide one example of governmentality as technology of power based on the application of apparatuses of security to the aleatory. Foucault (2007) argued that apparatuses of security were instruments that enabled governmentality by managing the aleatory through understanding
Geoforum, Jan 1, 2011
This paper uses the concept of ''grantocracy'' as an analytic to understand a form of governance ... more This paper uses the concept of ''grantocracy'' as an analytic to understand a form of governance through grant-making by state actors as one aspect of the reregulation wrought by neoliberalization of the state. We explore this idea through a case study of conservation grant making in the Keweenaw Peninsula of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a highly rural and remote forestry-dependent economy. Grantocracy requires the disaggregation and rescaling of the public good, as grants are provided to address specific problems and provide single-purpose solutions. We found that while grants were intended for single purposes, in practice the use of partnerships and matching funds espoused by these programs resulted in funding programs being recombined in often conflicting and unstable ways. Moreover, limited transparency in the grant-making process restricted opportunities for public input and has helped to elide the role of the state in land conservation, undermining democratic environmental governance. This further promotes a neoliberal ideology that government is the problem, never the solution. Many of these difficulties, we conclude, arise from reliance upon the territorial strategy of private property to achieve land conservation goals.
Energy Policy, Jan 1, 2011
This study asks whether sub-national inequalities in carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions mirror inte... more This study asks whether sub-national inequalities in carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions mirror international patterns in carbon inequality using the case study of China. Several studies have examined global-level carbon inequality; however, such approaches have not been used on a sub-national scale. This study examines inter-provincial inequality in CO 2 emissions within China using common measures of inequality (coefficient of variation, Gini Index, Theil Index) to analyze provincial-level data derived from the IPCC reference approach for the years 1997-2007. It decomposes CO 2 emissions inequality into its inter-regional and intra-regional components. Patterns of per capita CO 2 emissions inequality in China appear superficially similar to, though slightly lower than, per capita income inequality. However, decomposing these inequalities reveals different patterns. While inter-provincial income inequality is highly regional in character, inter-provincial CO 2 emissions inequality is primarily intraregional. While apparently similar, global patterns in CO 2 emissions are not mirrored at the subnational scale.
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Papers by Afton Clarke-Sather