How water features: negotiating and reassembling the sociomaterial politics of central Californian groundwater

Lawless, Christopher

Abstract

This article explores responses to the California Sustainable Groundwater Management Act (SGMA) to challenge post-political and governmentality perspectives on environmental management. I chart how SGMA reconfigured sociomaterial orderings in the Central Valley region, enacting a liminal moment for groundwater culture, between a historically entrenched libertarianism and an emergent communitarianism. Local organizations functioned as boundary organizations, re-shaping groundwater assemblages by negotiating boundaries between authority and marginalized communities. I argue that the structures and institutions typically critiqued in post-political and de-political theorising can be more fruitfully conceptualized as part of sociomaterial assemblages within which there lies potential for transformative groundwater politics.

Citation

Lawless, C. (2023). How water features: negotiating and reassembling the sociomaterial politics of central Californian groundwater. Space and Polity, 27(2), 218-233. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2023.2239153

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 15, 2023
• Online Publication Date: Jul 24, 2023
• Publication Date: 2023
• Deposit Date: Aug 7, 2023
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 7, 2023
• Journal: Space and Polity
• Print ISSN: 1356-2576
• Electronic ISSN: 1470-1235
• Publisher: Taylor and Francis Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 27
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 218-233
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13562576.2023.2239153
• Keywords: Political Science and International Relations; Geography, Planning and Development
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1712611