Select Ethnographies on Water in India: a Review (original) (raw)

Water, an essential resource for survival, has become a subject of central attention in the contemporary debates on sustainability. Research on water from various disciplinary perspectives suggests that the issue is not about quantity but about management of the water resources. Social sciences, particularly anthropology and sociology, have contributed a lot to our understanding of water as a resource, grounded in the empirical method. This paper is a review of selected ethnographic studies from different disciplinary perspectives, viz. anthropology, geography, urban studies and cultural politics on water. Based on ethnographic studies of water in both urban and rural India, the authors argue for increased attention of Indian scholarship to ‘infrastructures’ like water from an ethnographic perspective.