Critical and Post-Structural Approaches to Water and Development

This chapter provides an overview of critical and post-structural approaches to water and development. This body of work approaches the allocation, distribution and management of water as issues of power and rule, and as related to the creation of particular societies and subjects. In this regard, water is central for understanding “development” since it is a core component of the making of human societies. The chapter presents key concepts of critical and post-structural approaches to water and development. It gives an overview of how the global water crisis is understood and deconstructed, how the neoliberalization of water has been theorized and how we can make sense of the relationships between water, modernity and development. A key argument is that it is a characteristic of critical and post-structural approaches to water to take seriously the material aspects of water and water problems. The ways in which these perspectives address the materiality of inequalities, marginalizations and social hierarchies in water access and usage make this perspective important and relevant for addressing contemporary water and development challenges, especially since the effects of climate change increasingly are felt, as they hit in uneven and unequal ways.