Biopolitics discipline and hydrocitizenship Eric Sarmiento Sarah Whatmore

Biopolitics, discipline, and hydrocitizenship { Eric Sarmiento, Sarah Whatmore, and Catharina Landström School of Geography and the Environment, The University of Oxford Annual Meeting of the AAG San Francisco, CA 2016

I. Drought management as biopolitics II. Disciplinary interventions: local environmental organisations III. Tensions: affect and expertise IV. Thoughts on hydrocitizenship

² Biopower: the life of the territory ² Individual ↔ larger collectivities?

Biopolitics of drought governance: Primary referent objects Water Population (customers, demand) The environment The economy Drought (natural)

Optimize health of population, environment, and economy against risk of drought

Being conducted differently?

NGOs as contact points

“It did cause a lot of heartache, a lot of people were genuinely upset when they saw the river dry. […] It was anyone and everyone and it was all ages. […] There was nobody that was uncaring about it because I think so many people look into that river. They may even not realise how many times they look into it. ”

“Well, I don’t think that drought is a threat if we don’t have unreasonable pumping upstream. I’m fairly confident that these chalk hills, in fact, are going to provide us always with water [if abstraction is reduced]. ”

Conclusion ‘Top down’ vs ‘bottom up’? Or biopolitical and disciplinary modalities of power? Making scales, acting with scales Casting hydrocitizens as more than customers Knowledge in and of hydrosocial spaces – the hydrocitizen-scientist… …and the scientist as hydrocitizen?