ABSTRACT
The chapters in Part II examine the production and framing of scale in water governance. As considered throughout this volume, the concept of ‘scalar politics’ focuses attention not on scale per se, but on institutionalized practices, processes and relationships, and the ways these become differentially scaled (MacKinnon 2011; McCarthy 2005). Attentive to recent scholarly work on scale and scalar politics in geography, the chapters in this section examine an array of processes and social relations involved in governing water. These include the ‘strategic decentralization’ of water governance in highly differentiated states (Furlong, Chapter 8); the role of hydraulic technology in defining water rights (Jepson and Brannstrom, Chapter 9); and the production of citizen subjectivities in relation to water resources (Perramond, Chapter 10). As the authors of these chapters suggest, scale is socially produced and reconfigured through the frictions of socio-natural relations. Such scales are dynamic; and while scales of governance, once established, shape future possibilities for social action, they do not determine the possibilities (Sayre 2009).
