ABSTRACT
Do ordinary people have a place in governmentality/biopolitics studies? How do we deal with the complexity of empirical material when studying the ‘effects’ of power? Can the stories of individual people teach us anything about governing? These methodological questions arose over the course of a research project1
on people’s productive engagement with governing logics of water management in the specific local context of the South African municipality of eThekwini. On the one hand, the municipality had been internationally praised in policy circles for its achievements in providing water for the poor, and it is seen as a pioneer in sustainable service provision (SAWRC, 2011; SIWI, 2011; eThekwini Online, 2007). However, at the other extreme, both civil society and academics had levelled a severe critique at the municipality’s policies: that they were disproportionately hurtful to the poor, even ‘inhumane’ (Bond, 2010; Loftus, 2005a: 250; Loftus 2005b; The Mercery, 2007). To me, these contentious and contradictory representations of water services provision in eThekwini raised important questions about how water users make sense of their water services. Theoretically, the importance of water for survival and people’s way of life made such a study well suited to a biopolitical analysis, which I hoped would shed light on how the discourse of sustainable development governs the lives of water users. A research engagement on how water users made sense of their water ser-
vices required me to query the experiences of the people living in eThekwini. I therefore developed a methodological approach that combined biopolitical theory with narrative inquiry in order to explore how governing practices in water management matter in terms of people’s lives, according to their own stories. In this chapter, I will discuss the methodological challenges of this approach. The chapter is organized as follows: first, I discuss how I developed a the-
oretical framework for understanding ‘government’ in water management and how a narrative methodology enables us to study how such government matters in terms of people’s lives. Second, I elaborate on how I constructed my
empirical material in practice through narrative interviews, and address some key methodological challenges of the fieldwork as well as discussing what a focus on the materiality of water and water infrastructure implied for my study. Third, I explore what a ‘biopolitical reading’ of personal narratives implies and how we can address agency in such a framework. Ultimately, I will conclude with what people’s narratives can teach us about governing.
