The Dynamics of Crisis:

From Measurement to Everyday Life in the Middle East

Jan Selby

Department of International Relations, University of Sussex

Outline

1. Three discourses of water crisis

2. A very political infrastructure

3. Everyday practices of water management

4. Crisis? What crisis?

Discourse Problems Solutions Likely outcomes

Ecological Scarce or finite resources plus high populations

Limit population growth

Water wars

1. Three Discourses of Water Crisis

Discourse Problems Solutions Likely outcomes

Ecological Scarce or finite resources plus high populations

Limit population growth

Water wars

Technical Mismanagement and inefficiencies

Improve management and efficiency

Progress

1. Three Discourses of Water Crisis

Discourse Problems Solutions Likely outcomes

Ecological Scarce or finite resources plus high populations

Limit population growth

Water wars

Technical Mismanagement and inefficiencies

Improve management and efficiency

Progress

Political Uneven distribution of power and resources

Reduce power and resource inequalities

Winners and losers

1. Three Discourses of Water Crisis

2. A Very Political Infrastructure

Khaled Batrakh Reservoir, Hebron

2m

5m

to Kiryat Arba

to Hebron and Kiryat

Arba

3. Everyday Practices of Water Management

a. Municipal water authorities

b. Household supply management

c. Household demand management

3. Everyday Practices of Water Management

a. Municipal water authorities

b. Household supply management

c. Household demand management

Heterogeneity

Everyday expertise

Social significance of coping practices

‘This is good for us, good to learn; it teaches people how to get things from the difficult life ... you will do anything to make you human; if you have a satellite, everything you need, you will stop thinking about 1948.’

Young man, Dheisheh refugee camp, while filling water from a small spring

 

‘You feel like you’re not human.’

Woman, Dheisheh refugee camp, on the experience of water shortage 

4. Crisis? What Crisis?

a. Experts, measurement and ‘crisis’

b. Experts and their ‘irrational others’: politics and culture

c. But when one studies practices and experiences one finds:

- mundane normalcy of ‘crisis’

- rational supply and demand management