Description
Book SynopsisIn
Pipe Politics, Contested Waters, Lisa Björkman explores why water is chronically unavailable in Mumbai, India'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.
Trade Review"
Pipe Politics, Contested Waters is a vividly detailed ethnography of Mumbai captured in its policy, institutions, infrastructure, and everyday sociopolitical practices associated with the capture, delivery, and distribution of water. . . . The subject of water is multidisciplinary in approach and is best viewed through the holistic lens of anthropology. This work is a rare addition to the literature." -- Namika Raby * American Anthropologist *
"Björkman shows how a slum gets produced through the regulation of its water infrastructure and how this production is central to the city’s redevelopment schemes....Mumbai has long been portrayed and understood as a city of extreme wealth and poverty, epitomized in the visual of a luxury high-rise surrounded by a moat of slums. The politics of water as illustrated in this book cracks open this image by showing just how connected they are." -- Rashmi Sadana * American Ethnologist *
“Björkman engages comprehensively with this gulf and covers a vast terrain, unfolding an intriguing plot of urban infrastructure politics. . . . The book is a brilliant piece of work.”
-- Srinivas Chokkakula * Journal of South Asian Studies *
"This is a very impressive book, one that makes a significant contribution to the literatures on urban infrastructures, water politics and urbanization in the global South. Immersing the reader in the politics of water infrastructures is very effective in showing how the ‘big’ politics of global-city making ultimately and inevitably become bound up in context-specific politics." -- Ross Beveridge * International Journal of Urban and Regional Research *
"[
Pipe Politics, Contested Waters] overflows with novel insights on the significance of knowledge infrastructures within material networks; the workings of local politics; and the unforeseen consequences of economic reforms. It deserves to be widely read by infrastructure scholars, political anthropologists, and students of Indian political economy alike." -- Elizabeth Chatterjee * Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute *
"Björkman’s account is remarkably innovative. . . . This book makes a pioneering contribution to the emerging fields of assemblage urbanism, infrastructure studies, and post-colonial urban theory." -- Tanya Matthan * Contemporary South Asia *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction: Embedded Infrastructures 1
1. We Got Stuck in Between: Unmapping the Distribution Network 21
2. The Slum and Building Industry: Marketizing Urban Development 62
3. You Can't Stop Development: Hydraulic Shambles 82
4. It Was Like That from the Beginning: Becoming a Slum 98
5. No Hydraulics Are Possible: Brokering Water Knowledge 128
6. Good Doesn't Mean You're Honest: Corruption 165
7. If Water Comes It's Because of Politics: Power, Authority, and Hydraulic Spectacle 198
Conclusion: Pipe Politics 227
Appendix: Department of Hydraulic Engineering 235
Notes 237
References 267
Index 277
