Overview

Problematising Water: An Experiment on the Edges of Interdisciplinarity is a manifestation of thinking with water across a range of disciplines including human geography, sociology, anthropology, science and technology studies, and ethnomethodology. In this book, Vitellone reveals the alliances between Michel Foucault’s concept of problematisation and a new methodological approach for water- focused research, as seen through her study of London’s #OneLess refill water fountain pilot, an intervention to reduce plastic bottled water. Situating the refill water fountain as a problematic space for collaborating with marine scientists, marine conservationists, systems change practitioners, and publics engaged in the making and doing of refill, the book discusses how Foucault’s notion of problematisation forces a re- thinking of knowledge making practices in environmental research on water. It also synthesises a large body of literature by key thinkers, including Bruno Latour, Isabelle Stengers, Andrea Ballestero, Astrida Neimanis, Noortge Marres, Gay Hawkins, Andrew Barry, Mike Michael, and others, and links to current debates across a variety of disciplines. Problematising Water: An Experiment on the Edges of Interdisciplinarity is a timely and provocative contribution to debates around the climate crisis and environmental interventions and the role that different research methods and objects play within them. It will be of value to science and technology scholars, social scientists, natural scientists, and academics interested in the environmental humanities.

Full Product Details

9781041018766

Table of Contents

Reviews

""Nicole Vitellone’s Problematising Water: An Experiment on the Edges of Interdisciplinarity is a tour de force of conceptual and empirical invention. Tracing a path that takes in Foucault’s problematisation of problematisation through Stengers’ experimental constructivism and Garfinkelian ethnomethodology, Vitellone unpicks the methodological and ontological complexities of practically engaging with water in its multiple guises. In particular, the sustained focus on the #OneLess refill water fountain experiment yields a sophisticated exploration of the ways in which water is variously enacted by publics and professionals, within and across disciplines, and by the social scientific researcher themselves. Out of this emerges an innovative, insightful and evocative picture – a mosaic – of how an environmental politics can manifest in its specificity."" Mike Michael, Professor of Sociology, University of Exeter

Author Information

Nicole Vitellone is AF Warr Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Law and Social Justice and Co-Director of Centre for Health, Arts, Society & Environment (CHASE) at the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom.

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