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natural scientists (with no obvious boundary between the two); IWRM is thus an
issue on which 'human' and 'physical' geographers have conducted a great deal of
collaborative research (see, e.g., Watson et al., 1996) in pursuit of the elusive 'syn-
thesis' which has long been a goal (or, some would argue, chimera) of geographical
research.
This integration has, as with other areas of the natural and social sciences,
recently been unsettled by the work of (largely social science) researchers interested
in the social construction of scientifi c knowledge. Much of this work has focused
on contentious issues in environmental debates, such as global climate change
(Benton and Redclift, 1994; Demeritt, 2001). But environmental geographers have
also deployed techniques such as deconstruction and discourse analysis to examine
issues of water management. Geographer Jamie Linton, for example, examines
academic and popular discourses of the global 'water crisis' which became promi-
nent (particularly in the media) in the 1990s (Linton, 2004). Linton argues that
rapid dissemination of the 'water crisis' narrative was not due to an equally rapid
process of biophysical or environmental changes in actual water availability. While
acknowledging the very real constraints that water scarcity poses in some areas,
Linton argues that the method of discourse analysis demonstrates that the 'water
scarcity' storyline gained prominence due to a conjunction of actors and interests
that produced a range of artefacts enabling the 'water crisis' storyline to emerge.
First, the development of this storyline was predicated upon the regional and even-
tually global hydrological models developed by Soviet hydrologists in response to
the information demands of centralised planning and resource management in the
former USSR. Initially suspicious of Soviet methods, Western hydrologists began
(many reluctantly) in the 1980s to think in 'global terms' about core hydrological
concepts such as runoff, renewable water resources and water balance. The subse-
quent development of indices of water stress and water scarcity married neatly with
the desires of international aid agencies to secure additional funding for water-
related development, effacing concerns voiced by hydrologists over uncertainty in
global and even regional estimates of water availability. Finally, advocates of water
commercialisation proved only too eager to mobilise a discourse of water scarcity
and a 'water crisis' in order to argue in favour of full-cost water pricing. Advocates
of privatization were equally supportive of the reframing of water as an economic
good which required effi cient management by the private sector, thereby attempting
to naturalise the contentious processes of privatisation, marketisation and commer-
cialisation of water supply and resources which became widespread in the 1990s
(see, e.g., Shirley, 2002; Shiva, 2002).
Linton deconstructs and questions the 'water crisis' narrative, both querying the
soundness of its empirical basis, and questioning the political and ideological agendas
that it serves. This approach is a fairly common tactic adopted by human geogra-
phers working on water issues (and environmental issues more generally), and has
led to some fruitful insights into the actual impacts of, for example, the privatisation
and commercialisation of water supply systems (Bakker, 2004), as well as analyses
of the ideological and economic goals embedded in seemingly 'apolitical' water
supply systems (Swyngedouw, 2004a). Swyngedouw's work, for example, docu-
ments the relationship between political economic interests, ecological processes,
and the complex and the highly inequitable water supply system in the city of
Guayaquil, Ecuador - which, like most cities in the Third World, has a limited water
supply network delivering subsidised water to the wealthy, leaving 600,000 mostly
poor residents to rely on tankers or water vendors charging much higher prices per
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