Engendering the debate about water's management and care -views from the Antipodes
Davidson, Julie and Stratford, Elaine (2007) Engendering the debate about water's management and care -views from the Antipodes. Geoforum, 38 (5). pp. 815-827. ISSN 0016-7185 ![[img]](http://eprints.utas.edu.au/style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png) | PDF - Full text restricted - Requires a PDF viewer 371Kb |
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2005.10.007 AbstractIn this paper, we map the gendered contours of contemporary water management in order to demonstrate that regimes for individual ownership of water rights, markets, and the productive use of water simply reinscribe and simultaneously submerge in their apparent gender-neutrality a normative masculinity that underpins economic globalization and fortiWes existing power relations. Not only do such arrangements disadvantage reproductive values and non-consumptive users; more generally, they also lack the capacity to ensure water's sustainable development. Consequently, new management institutions for sustainability are demanded and, in making a case for equity enhancing and adaptive institutions that better reflect water's materiality, its multiple values and emerging water scarcity, we argue the need to invoke the conserving and ecologically protective feminine principle. To support our reasoning, we analyse water reform processes
instituted in Australia and specifically by the State of Tasmania, referring to the latter jurisdiction to illustrate the gendered nature of resource management and to underscore tensions between economic globalization and sustainability, concluding that the tensions
between the two agendas are probably irresolvable. We position our work in the borderlands among gender studies, feminist geography and philosophy, and political ecology, drawing together insights about the construction of resource management, the possibilities of the
feminine care ethic, and ideas about the characteristics of institutional systems that could ensure equitable allocation and sustainable use of the planet's resources. Item Type: | Article |
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Additional Information: | This paper was first presented at the Fluid Bonds conference in Canberra, Australia, in 2003. A related work is:
Davidson, J, STRATFORD, E, Economic Globalization, Sustainability, Gender and Water, Fluid Bonds: Views on Gender and Water, Stree, K Lahiri-Dutt (ed), Calcutta, 29-47 (2006) |
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Keywords: | Water management; Gender; Institutional change; Policy; Tasmania; Ethic of care |
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Subjects: | 370000 Studies in Human Society > 370400 Human Geography > 370402 Social and Cultural Geography |
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ID Code: | 1629 |
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Deposited By: | Dr E Stratford |
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Deposited On: | 19 Sep 2007 |
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Last Modified: | 09 Jan 2008 02:30 |
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