Beyond rules and norms: Heterogeneity, ubiquity, and visibility of groundwaters

Abstract

Over the last 150 years or so engineers, farmers, scientists, and many others around the globe have gained access to the waters that lie underground with drilling technology, pumps and cheap energy. Since the mid‐twentieth century, a massive worldwide proliferation of deep wells has redistributed groundwaters away from springs, seeps, wells, and oases, robbing them of the water that supports local sustainable socionatural relations. The idea and social fact of groundwater has emerged in this history, and has three distinguishing features: heterogeneity, ubiquity, and visibility. The failure to halt depletion has prompted a turn to culture in the hope of governing the liquid sustainably. However, rather than grapple with the complexities and contradictions of heterogeneity, ubiquity, and visibility, these efforts take a rather thin view of culture—as rules, norms, and institutions to be studied, codified and deployed to address the crisis. This instrumental understanding of culture as a set of traits to be selectively used for arresting depletion has not proven effective, however, compelling us to rethink our cultural, political, and economic engagements with groundwater.