Contested flows: the uncertainty and scarcity of water in Jordan

Jordan is increasingly defined by water scarcity: its status as one of the most waterpoor nations on earth is repeated frequently in both the country’s own economic and climate change strategy documents, and in the reports of international donors. Yet this idea of absolute scarcity obscures the ways water flows are shaped by social practices and by power, making experiences of water scarcity extremely uneven. Dr Fred Wojnarowski uses ethnographic research with water users, officials and people already experiencing water scarcity to challenge technical, apolitical understandings of the water system, and to show how any solutions must be social and political. This display represents Jordan’s water system not as a technical system for the movement and management of a natural resource, but as a social and economic metabolism, in which many people and places are brought into relationships with each other at different scales by the contested flows of water. Water here speaks to wider flows of power, revealing issues of equity and distribution. Through a series of case studies the display looks at the water system, as it is generally understood, and asks some questions about what within this picture is unknown, open to question and contentious.