Seminar 3 ~ Water Governance and Policy 2: Activism

Reading: Ken Conca. (2006). Governing Water, ch. 6-10

Activism and Advocacy

Graham made a helpful distinction between activism and advocacy. In general, I understand that advocacy gathers support for a particular issue, intending either to bring or to resist change; and activism assigns blame for a particular issue, pressuring the responsible party to change. Advocacy will attack the problem general, while activism will attack a party particular (the ‘villain’). I’m unsure if the distinction is generally made on these grounds, but it helps me to understand two approaches to promoting social change. The video Graham played, for example, is a tame case of advocacy.

One classmate commented that activist tactics may be unhelpful in the long run. Due to their typically reactive and aggressive nature, the community may not learn skills or establish organization to deal with future problems. I also would guess that many potential participants are sidelined because their temperaments do not align with the temperament of activism.

Activism does have its benefits. Its participants operate quickly in manners that draw public attention and gain public sympathy. They also identify a specific party by assigning blame and demanding restitution. This villain feature of activism is important because if no one is made responsible, no one is held accountable, and change may be slow if at all. Activist pressure can bring faster results, and Conca demonstrates this in the later chapters of his book.

So two distinct characteristics of activism are its aggressive tactics and its identification of a villain.

I think attention-grabbing strategies can serve a very needed purpose. The officials, investors, executives, experts, etc making extremely important decisions are often physically (and thus emotionally) displaced from the issues. (How many world leaders, executives, or UN chairs go home to decrepit housing, undrinkable water, and malnourished children?) In a context increasingly emphasizing business protocol, comfort, and self-indulgence, something is needed to remind us of the horrors and injustice faced by so many. And sometimes this is well-served by public criticism, disturbing images, or a naked protester.

“Remember son, Don’t talk about politics and…”

I’ve been wrestling with a way to make my blog my blog. You won’t know me and how I think unless you know that the life I live I live not for me but for Jesus, who died and rose for me. All of my thinking (and I think a lot) is done to, for, and with God – this class included. As we were asked to blog critical reflections, I have obscured their fullness and concealed the One who taught me to think. I then feel handicapped and sense I may have robbed our class of a fruitful dimension. Every time we meet we break a naïve rule by talking about political matters, and so far we have been well-behaved. In future blogs, I will be honoured to break another norm by including a biblical, relevant, God-ward meditation.

- jn

A Look Below the Surface

Reading: Ken Conca, Governing Water, chapters 1-5.

[My apologies for my late post.]

Some matters are so complex, that I find it extremely fruitful to peel back the layers and expose its core. And from here surfaces the pivotal, central, fundamental issue(s). Sometimes this compounds the original complexity, because the original matter was just one of many limbs sprouting from the same root. But nevertheless, I then see at last (though sometimes barely) a simplicity ruling the complexity, a unity ordering the diversity.

I spent a lot of time in the first chapter. I read like a turtle walks, and Ken Conca was charting a course with so many twists and turns that I feared getting lost, or least missing the sights. Conca begins by examining “controversies that swirl around water issues” (p. 3). “Attempts… to govern water globally… seem doomed to founder on more fundamentally contested questions” (p. 4). In other words, the real/root issue of the water crisis is not water. The nature of these “contested questions” is much more fundamental.

During the seminar I posed the question, What values ought to frame water’s place and use in the world? Graham then added, How do we choose these values? or, How do we value our values? We are familiar with certain ‘metanorms’ (meta meaning ‘higher order’), or rules about rules. Consider science, for example. Before I ask “What is gravity?” I must first answer “What is science, and how is it done?” Or consider history. Before I ask “Who was Pontius Pilate?” I must first answer “What is history, and how is it done?”

So it is with water. Before we ask “What is water, who’s is it, and for what?” we must first answer “What is the world? Who am I / are we? How am I to live?” Whether we think about these questions or not, our values and behaviour whisper our answer. Conca (p. 40, emphasis mine) pinpoints the presumptions of three critical characteristics of regimes, which reveal a certain way of looking at the world and living together in it:

"Extending the popular metaphor of regimes as rules of the game, Basel and Montreal share strong presumptions about the territorial boundaries of play, about standing and hierarchy among states and lesser players, and about the path to victory through science and bureaucracy."

But many disagree (hence the contention), Nature being one of them (hence the failure). To me it’s remarkable that this global problem surfaces and pivots on questions so basic to existence. But… maybe I got it all wrong.

So I suppose the question is, How ought we perceive the world, ourselves, our purpose?