Suchergebnisse

Die häufig auf ihren Kampf gegen Korruption reduzierte Partei AAP hat bei den Regionalwahlen in Neu-Delhi einen fulminanten Wahlsieg errungen. Mit partizipativen Politikelementen konnte sie auch die Partei des erfolgsverwöhnten Premierministers Modi hinter sich lassen.

Waste water governance presents a major challenge in India's cities and megacities. High rainfall variability, partial sewer networks, and waste water discharge through often dilapidated and silted storm water drains lead to impracticalities of daily life, health hazards, and environmental pollution, among other problems. Mostly located in the blanks of the sewer map, exposure to waste water is especially high in informal settlements. As everyday lives get affected, governing the waste waterscape becomes a perpetual negotiation process between local bureaucrats, politicians and residents. Against this background, this thesis investigates how governance processes produce the waste waterscape, understood as a social, constructed and material space. Combining the literature on governance with insights into the 'everyday state' (Fuller & Bénéï, 2001), the concept of everyday governance is developed. To better grasp the effect of power in governance, Foucault's governmentality approach is introduced. With its help, practices of waste water governance are placed at the centre of analysis. After studying the waste water governmentalities and the approach to informal settlements in Delhi through a genealogical analysis, governance practices are investigated. The analysis is carried out in two types of informal settlements: a squatter settlement and a semi-legal area built in contradiction to the Delhi Master Plan (Unauthorised Colony). In both, qualitative methods such as interviews, ethnographic observation and Participative Urban Appraisal have been used extensively while mapping the settlements with their waste water infrastructure and related problems, too. Results show that waste water governance is addressed in policies through concerns such as public health, sanitation, and more recently, water and rivers. Waste water is governed through power-laden processes that are predicated on 'Othering' (Spivak, 1985) certain groups, labelled as less clean, less ritually pure, or less hygienic. In Delhi, residents of informal settlements are part of these groups, as their waste water-related practices are characterised as highly problematic and in need of change. Yet, while squatters are not invited to participate in governance processes, inhabitants of the Unauthorised Colony are seen as potential partners in governance by the government. Both groups, however, have very limited opportunities to participate in framing problems of urban governance. This results in major waste water issues being 'invisible' to politicians and bureaucrats. At the same time, residents' self-help is dismissed by state representatives as problematic or even illegal. Results point to processes that powerfully delegitimise inhabitants' production of the material urban space.

Urban ponds in India have for a long time been used for multiple purposes and have been accessible to a wide range of social groups; they thus often represent an urban commons. However, recent transformations of urban ponds into infrastructure that serves more limited uses have been accompanied by enclosure and social exclusion. Using an urban political ecology approach that is enriched with the concepts of environmental imaginaries and (un)commoning, this paper examines the ideational foundations and societal mechanisms underpinning the transformation of the pondscape of Navsari, a small city in the state of Gujarat. Based on interviews and field observations, the study found that the small-town elite's imaginary of the 'modern city' underpinned the shift to the ponds becoming part of Navsari's drinking water infrastructure; this led to the enclosure of the ponds and thus the ideational and physical separation of residents from these waterbodies and the exclusion of traditional user groups. This socio-ecological transformation of the pondscape, however, was not characterised by simple, linear processes of uncommoning driven by local elites: the dismantling of the urban commons (in the form of waste dumping by multiple actors) largely preceded the creation of infrastructure; enclosures and exclusions remained imperfect and spatially variable; and in some places informal resource-use rules continued or were recreated by local communities. This research points to how important it is for urban political ecology to consider the imaginaries and practices of multiple actors – including those beyond the metropolitan areas – in the construction of a nuanced narrative of dispossession in the neoliberal city.

In this article, we identify different types of urban nature, more or less « wild » or « artificialized », that are produced through the interaction of different actors and the natural environment. Taking cues from Urban Political Ecology, we analyze power relations and environmental imaginaries that result in the production of different urban ecologies and access rights in the case of ponds and lakes in medium-sized Indian cities. Dans cet article, nous identifions différents types de natures urbaines, plus ou moins « sauvages » ou « artificialisées », produites par l'interaction entre différents acteurs et le milieu naturel. Inspiré par l'Urban Political Ecology, nous analysons les relations de pouvoir et les représentations issues de la production de différentes écologies et des droits d'accès dans le cas des étangs et des lacs des villes moyennes en Inde.

AbstractWhile researchers in the growing field of urban political ecology have given significant attention to the fragmented hydroscape that characterizes access to drinking water in the global South, so far the (re)production of other urban waters and its related power relations have been underexplored. This article seeks to contribute to filling this gap by exploring the everyday negotiations over access to urban water bodies, in particular ponds. These are understood as a composite resource that is simultaneously water, land and public space. This analysis draws on a case study from a small city in West Bengal, India, and is based primarily on data from open interviews with different actors with a stake in urban ponds. The article demonstrates that in a context of ambiguity of the statutory governance regime and fragmented control, the (re)production of the pondscape is embedded within complex relationships of power whereby social marginalization can be offset at least momentarily by local institutions such as neighbourhood clubs and political parties.

Solid waste management is often perceived as one of the most pressing environmental problems facing local governments in urban India and elsewhere in the global south. However, solid waste is not simply a managerial problem but is in many ways a highly political issue that involves diverse political actors at different scales. Particularly at the local level, solid waste management can also be a key part of broader political strategies, acting through its unique materiality as an environmental artefact and social relic. In this paper, we use an urban political ecology approach to examine a recent segregation-at-source project in a small town in West Bengal as a lens to understand more general multi-scalar, socio-political urban processes. Drawing primarily upon qualitative field research, the paper shows how diffuse forms of power and different governmentalities were applied between and within state-level government agents, municipal authorities, local waste workers and local communities to implement and (re)shape this project. The research points to the complexity of urban environmental governance and everyday politics in which action repertoires ranging from threats, the creation of environmental and hygienic subjects, moral appeals and economic rationality, underpinned by the harmful character of waste and by socio-cultural imaginaries thereof, (re)produced uneven political ecologies of waste between and within different neighbourhoods of the city.

Urban Political Ecology (UPE) has mainly evolved within the discipline of geography to examine the power relations that produce uneven urban spaces (infrastructures and natures) and unequal access to resources in cities. Its increasingly poststructuralist orientation demands the questioning of received categories and concepts, including those of (neoliberal) governance, government and of the state. This paper attempts to open this black box by referring to the mostly anthropological literature on everyday governance and the everyday state. We argue that UPE could benefit from ethnographic governance studies to unveil multiple state and non-state actors that influence the local environment, their diverse rationalities, normative registers and interactions across scales. This would also to enrich and nuance geographical UPE accounts of neoliberal environmental governance and potentially render the framework more policy relevant.

India's 74th Constitutional Amendment obliges state governments to devolve responsibilities related to urban environmental resources and services to the Urban Local Bodies. However, the existing literature points to deficiencies in urban decentralization, including a mismatch between resources and responsibilities, financial constraints, and a lack of capacities at the municipal level. This article, based on comparative fieldwork and analysis of environmental governance in four small cities in Gujarat and West Bengal, two states representing contrasting subnational political regimes, largely confirms the literature on urban decentralization, but it also shows important differences between the two states. Municipal governance reflects state-level regime types to some extent: While an efficient local and parastatal bureaucracy spearheads investments in environmental infrastructure in Gujarat, relatively autonomous elected municipal councillors in West Bengal guide a widely spread creation of small environmental assets. The availability of more untied funds at the local level in Gujarat than in West Bengal leads to more pronounced intra-state variation and opens possibilities for more substantial municipal agency.