Social Science Research Council

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL
DISSERTATION PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT FELLOWSHIP

WATER SUSTAINABILITY: SOCIETY, POLITICS, CULTURE
SPRING 2007 WORKSHOP AGENDA

Research Director: Steven Caton
Research Director: Ben Orlove

Radisson Hotel Denver Stapleton Plaza
Thursday, May 17 – Sunday, May 20, 2007

This is the first of two workshops designed to help students prepare cogent and fundable dissertation proposals in their chosen field. The two goals of the first workshop are 1) to map the research field with respect to contributing disciplines, methods, sources, and area knowledge; and 2) to help prepare fellows for their pre-dissertation summer research. (The goal of the second workshop will be to focus on the mechanics and methods of writing a dissertation proposal). The two goals stand in close relation to each other: through a sustained and structured discussion of student proposals and their component parts, we hope to contribute to the mapping of the research field itself.

Delimiting the field of water sustainability can be attempted in a preliminary fashion by asking four basic questions, each of which is addressed by different disciplines or combination of disciplines (e.g., anthropology, history, economics, political science and international relations, sociology, and discourse analysis, broadly defined). (Students for the workshop have been chosen in part to reflect this inter-disciplinarity.) The first of these questions has to do with economic resources and human rights, especially how the concepts of “culture/society” and “nature/environment” intersect in the field. The second has to do with distribution and equity, or how water is valued as a resource and a right to be shared among members of a society or the inhabitants of the world. The third has to do with organization, or how institutional economics and politics play a role in the management and distribution of water. And the fourth question concerns debate and discourse, or how debates over water are conducted in civil society and impact legislation, water problem awareness and other issues. These questions will help jump start that part of the workshop’s discussion devoted to delimiting and defining the field.

Workshop Readings and Resources:
Research Field resources have been placed on the secure DPDF web portal. 

Workshop Assignments

May 8, Due on the secure DPDF web portal: Identify one article or book that has particularly influenced your research, and write a short paragraph describing its importance to your formulation of a research problem.

May 15: By now, fellows should have read through all the fellows' projects and much of the "Water Workshop Reading List". Fellows must write a one page statement of your project, and post this on the secure DPDF web portal. In this restatement, fellows describe a shift in their research question, proposed methodology, source base, or research strategy, having read through the other project descriptions and some of the bibliography?

WATER SUSTAINABILITY: WORKSHOP SCHEDULE 

Session 1: Introduction and Purpose of Workshops
(Thursday, 9 AM – 12:30 PM)

Plenary Session: Presentations by Program Director Peter Sahlins and the Research Directors

Session 2:  Mapping Fields, Asking Questions
(Thursday, 1:30 PM – 5 PM) 

Introduction to the workshop, its aims and procedures. Students will give a brief presentation of their projects with five-minute discussion following each presentation. The discussion of how to define the field of water sustainability will then begin. The four guiding questions will be reviewed by the organizers and discussed/critiqued by the group as a whole, referring to bibliographical references whenever possible. Summary of the discussion will conclude the session, with an effort to delimit the field of water sustainability study more fully.

Session 3: Matters of Research Question, Method, Data and Sources I
(Friday, 9 AM – 12:30 PM)

The aim of Friday’s sessions is to understand what a research question is, how it relates to a field of study such as water sustainability and to a particular project of study within that field. Particularly important is an understanding of how methods relate to the research questions being asked, and what data or sources might be necessary to answer those questions in specific projects. Differences between quantitative/qualitative methods will be addressed, and attention to the problems (including ethical ones) of data collection and recording will be discussed (for example, taking field notes, keeping field journals). Problems of project scale and time constraints will also be touched upon, as well as the need/desirability of conducting research in different sites or comparatively.

After an introductory discussion of a half-hour, we will focus on four projects in the morning. Each discussion will last approximately 45 minutes: 10 minutes of presentation by the fellow, followed by 10 minutes of comments by the interlocutor and then 30 minutes of discussion by the group. We will consider two projects in the afternoon as well, followed by a field trip.  In the discussion of each presentation, we will consider the issues raised in the preliminary discussion. (If students wish to illustrate a method, they should bring data, charts, or any other visual aids needed to make their point).

Projects to discuss:
- Sandra Ruckstuhl, "Socio-political Dynamics of Water Security: Understanding Institutions and Incentives for Improved Conflict Prevention and Sustainability"
- Christopher City, "Constructing Drought: Law, Land Use, and Water Sustainability"
- Virginia Breedlove, "Landscape and Livelihood in the Lake Chad Basin: A Social History of Environmental Change in Eastern Niger and Northeastern Nigeria Since 1968"
- Neil Pischner, "Andean Oral Traditions as Cultural Response to Climate Change"

Session 4: Matters of Research Question, Method, Data and Sources II
(Friday, 1:30 PM – 5 PM)

The first half of the afternoon session will focus on two projects. The second part of the afternoon session will address research methods and sources with a field trip, a walking tour along the South Platte River, led by Mark Sullivan, an advanced graduate student in urban design at the University of Colorado, with a background in archaeology and architecture. We will examine the influence of water in this semi-arid environment on industry, transportation, residential housing and recreation, considering the influence of economic, political and cultural factors. Fellows are encouraged to bring notebooks, digital cameras and, if they think it would be useful, audio recorders.

Projects to discuss:
-  Angelia Haro, "Water and Promises of Utopia in Development Discourse and Practice"
- Tessa Farmer, "Water and Oasis: Social Meanings and State Administration of Water in the Egyptian Oasis of Siwa"

Session 5:  Analytical Strategies and Proposal Framing I
(Saturday, 9 AM – 12:30 PM)

Saturday’s sessions, like Friday’s, will open with a morning session that consists of a general discussion and a consideration of four proposals. The afternoon session will be divided into two halves, the first considering two proposals and the second an additional activity, in this case a meeting with a political scientist. The aim of Saturday’s sessions afternoon session is devoted to the question of how the formulation of a research project is strategically connected to specific sources or literatures in an inter-disciplinary field like water sustainability studies. That is, how does one frame one’s project as a contribution to knowledge within an intersecting set of literatures (e.g., history, environmentalism, political ecology, etc.). The students who will present are asked to discuss two or three readings from the workshop’s bibliography in relation to their project, showing how their project relates to a set of sources or other studies.

Projects to discuss:
-  Hao Nguyen, "The urbanization of water: Planning for adequate water services in cities of the developing world- Case study of Vietnam"
-  Julio Postigo, "Andean herders' responses to changing water availability"
-  Sarah Wise, "Fluid Boundaries: Marine Protected Areas and Shifting Perceptions of Seascapes"
-  Lisa Pfeiffer, "Sustainability, Equity, and Growth: The Role of Water Markets in Mexico"

Session 6: Analytical Strategies and Proposal Framing II
(Saturday, 12:30 PM – 5 PM)

Projects to discuss:
- Jessica Lage, "The role of water in rural land-use transformations in Spain"
- Maya Peterson, "An Environmental History of Central Asia in the Late-19th and Early-20th Centuries"

Visit to the workshop of political scientist Arun Agrawal and a discussion of his work relevant to this workshop. (Students will be expected to have read his work listed in the workshop bibliography.) Especially important is to his research design, his research questions, the methods he thought appropriate to them, his sense of how to strategically locate his project within multiple fields of study, and how he developed his field proposal.

Session 7:  Looking Forward
(Sunday, 9 AM – 12:30 PM)

We will sum up what we have learned, re-visiting the question of water sustainability as a field of study. In the remaining session we will explore future directions. How to make best use of the summer period, how to stay in touch with each – especially concerning problems that arise in the field that we should know about, can discuss and might actually help with – and planning for the September workshop.