Synopses & Reviews
Despite Mumbaiand#39;s position as Indiaand#39;s financial, economic, and cultural capital, water is chronically unavailable for rich and poor alike. Mumbaiand#39;s dry taps are puzzling, given that the city does not lack for either water or financial resources. In
Pipe Politics, Contested Waters, Lisa Bjandouml;rkman shows how an elite dream to transform Mumbai into a andquot;world classandquot; business center has wreaked havoc on the cityandrsquo;s water pipes. In rich ethnographic detail,
Pipe Politics explores how the everyday work of getting water animates and inhabits a penumbra of infrastructural activityandmdash;of business, brokerage, secondary markets, and sociopolitical networksandmdash;whose workings are reconfiguring and rescaling political authority in the city. Mumbaiandrsquo;s increasingly illegible and volatile hydrologies, Bjandouml;rkman argues, are lending infrastructures increasing political salience just as actual control over pipes and flows becomes contingent on dispersed and intimate assemblages of knowledge, power, and material authority. These new arenas of contestation reveal the illusory and precarious nature of the project to remake Mumbai in the image of Shanghai or Singapore and gesture instead toward the highly contested futures and democratic possibilities of the actually existing city.and#160;
Review
andquot;Pipe Politics, Contested Waters is a brilliant ethnography of water and Lisa Bjandouml;rkman is one helluva fieldworker: indefatigable, resilient, determined, and resourceful. Determined as she was to get to the bottom of things, what she finds is that she canand#39;t. The more she tries to map the infrastructure or follow the water engineers and their workmen to the sites at which the and#39;systemand#39; needs to be fixed, the more the solutions, if there are any, seem out of reach. A pathbreaking book, Pipe Politics, Contested Waters is destined to become a classic in the burgeoning literature on water and water sustainability.andquot;
Review
andquot;Pipe Politics, Contested Waters is an important and original study of urbanization in the global South. Using the example of Mumbaiand#39;s water supply, Lisa Bjandouml;rkman explicates the complex nexus of cultural and political developments affecting everyday life in the city while marking an important break in the historiography of urban infrastructure networks. Bjandouml;rkman tells an extremely complex story very effectively.andquot;
Synopsis
In Pipe Politics, Contested Waters, Lisa Bjandouml;rkman explores why water is chronically unavailable in Mumbai, Indiaand#39;s economic and financial capital. She attributes water shortage to economic reforms that allowed urban development to ignore the water infrastructure, which means that in Mumbai, politics is often about water.
Synopsis
Winner, 2014 Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences
Despite Mumbai's position as India's financial, economic, and cultural capital, water is chronically unavailable for rich and poor alike. Mumbai's dry taps are puzzling, given that the city does not lack for either water or financial resources. In Pipe Politics, Contested Waters, Lisa Bjorkman shows how an elite dream to transform Mumbai into a "world class" business center has wreaked havoc on the city's water pipes. In rich ethnographic detail, Pipe Politics explores how the everyday work of getting water animates and inhabits a penumbra of infrastructural activity--of business, brokerage, secondary markets, and sociopolitical networks--whose workings are reconfiguring and rescaling political authority in the city. Mumbai's increasingly illegible and volatile hydrologies, Bjorkman argues, are lending infrastructures increasing political salience just as actual control over pipes and flows becomes contingent on dispersed and intimate assemblages of knowledge, power, and material authority. These new arenas of contestation reveal the illusory and precarious nature of the project to remake Mumbai in the image of Shanghai or Singapore and gesture instead toward the highly contested futures and democratic possibilities of the actually existing city.
Synopsis
Despite Mumbaiand#39;s position as Indiaand#39;s financial, economic, and cultural capital, water is chronically unavailable for rich and poor alike. Mumbaiand#39;s dry taps are puzzling, given that the city does not lack for either water or financial resources. In Pipe Politics, Contested Waters, Lisa Bjandouml;rkman explains how an elite dream to transform Mumbai into a world class business center like Shanghai has wreaked havoc on the cityandrsquo;s water pipes. Believing that markets could resolve longstanding political conflicts over urban land and resources, Mumbai policymakers in the 1990s institutionalized regulatory instruments that enabled urban developers to ignore city planning and to build without regard for the water infrastructure. Bjandouml;rkman spent eighteen months in Mumbai, talking with everyone from plumbers, families, and businesses, to meter readers, government officials, and international consultants. She found that in contemporary Mumbai politics is often about water, so much so that those who can command it reliably can also wield considerable political power. Bjandouml;rkman shows how urban infrastructures exist within materially dense sociopolitical networks whose workings are transforming lives and rescaling political authority in the city.
About the Author
Lisa Bjandouml;rkman is Assistant Professor of Urban and Public Affairs at University of Louisville, and Research Scholar at CETREN (Transregional Research Network), University of Gandouml;ttingen.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgmentsand#160; ix
Introduction: Embedded Infrastructuresand#160; 1
1. We Got Stuck in Between: Unmapping the Distribution Networkand#160; 21
2. The Slum and Building Industry: Marketizing Urban Developmentand#160; 62
3. You Canand#39;t Stop Development: Hydraulic Shamblesand#160; 82
4. It Was Like That from the Beginning: Becoming a Slumand#160; 98
5. No Hydraulics Are Possible: Brokering Water Knowledgeand#160; 128
6. Good Doesnand#39;t Mean Youand#39;re Honest: Corruptionand#160; 165
7. If Water Comes Itand#39;s Because of Politics: Power, Authority, and Hydraulic Spectacleand#160; 198
Conclusion: Pipe Politicsand#160; 227
Appendix: Department of Hydraulic Engineeringand#160; 235
Notesand#160; 237
Referencesand#160; 267
Index