Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: The Social Life of Water: The Limits of the Commodity and its Neoliberal State

研究生Nikhil Anand将在James Ferguson博士的指导下，对印度孟买供水私有化的困难进行研究。通过对孟买及其周边两个缺水社区的人种学研究，他将调查为什么在国家机构宣称致力于亲市场政策的情况下，印度的公共供水项目却在激增。当在没有实质性公民权利历史的后殖民国家实施时，亲市场政策的效果尚不清楚。初步研究表明，孟买穷人获取水的方式使公共和私人的区分变得复杂，而这一直是政治经济学的核心。本研究项目旨在通过对城市贫民的参与观察和国家机构的制度人种学来理解当代国家中公民身份和市场界限的变化。通过跟踪穷人如何获得水，本研究将显示正式公民身份如何与城市穷人的其他类型的政治主张相结合。这项研究很重要，因为它将调查为什么在一些社会和政治背景下，当其他基本需求（如食物）通过市场机制分配时，水很难商品化。因此，孟买水的社会生活可能会揭示国家和市场运作所必需的安排的新见解。这项研究也将有助于社会科学家的教育。

Graduate student Nikhil Anand, under the supervision of Dr. James Ferguson, will undertake research on the difficulties of privatizing water distribution in Mumbai, India. Through ethnographic research in two water poor communities in and around Mumbai, he will investigate the question of why public water projects proliferate in India even as state agencies profess a commitment to pro-market policy. When operationalized in postcolonial states that do not have histories of substantive citizen rights, the effects of pro-market policies are as yet unknown. Primary research suggests that the ways in which the poor access water in Mumbai complicates the distinction of the public and private, long central to political economy. This research project seeks to understand the shifting boundaries of citizenship and markets in the contemporary state through participant observation among the urban poor, and institutional ethnography of state agencies. By following how the poor access water, this research shall show how formal citizenship articulates with other kinds of political claims by the urban poor. The research is important because it will investigate why in some social and political contexts water is difficult to commoditize when other basic needs (like food) are distributed through market mechanisms. As such, the social life of water in Mumbai might reveal new insights about the arrangements necessary for the functioning of states and markets. The research also will contribute to the education of a social scientist.