The waterscapes are spaces, imaginary and real, promised and inhabited, that define the symbolic and material power of water governmentality over social groups and the liquid world. Waterscapes might be canals, urban watersheds, dams, drainage systems, ports, water reservoirs, natural parks, and renders representing the desired image of a city. They express the intricate power assemblages that shape different cultures, aesthetics, discourses, and their relations with water and fluidity. 

Abject water:

Water is not equal for every human being when observing the social processes through which many people are abjected from water. Water is differential: captured, allocated, controlled, commodified, and represented; and abjected: not granted and sometimes toxic, distant, and illegal. Abject water is a concept that allows us to think about “disproportionate challenges in accessing water supply and sanitary services” (Nauges 2013). Abjection “designates unlivable, uninhabitable zones of social life which are nonetheless densely populated by those who are not enjoying the status of subject but whose living, under the sign of unlivable, is required to circumscribe the domain of subject”(Murphy 2006, 152). Abjection is, I suggest, an appropriate term to describe informal settlements in general and their water and sanitation access”. (Crow 2018, 93).

I also chose the Cambridge edition on Water Justice by Boelens et al (2018) but chose different analytic concepts from two chapters.  “Urban Water and Sanitation Injustice: An Analytic Framework” by Ben Crow and “…”And Not a Single Injustice Remains”: Hydro-Territorial Colonization and Techno-Political Transformations in Spain” by Erik Swyngedouw and Rutger Boelens. 

Crow’s chapter conceptualizes water from the experience of marginalized women facing sanitizing injustice. The chapter shows how the lacks of water access and sanitation amplify burdens on women in domestic and working environments, reinforcing structures that protect the patriarchy. It is a chapter, perhaps, intended for public policy. The chapter is a bibliographic review to analyze unequal structures affecting how different social groups relate to water. 

Swyngedouw and Rutger Boelens describe in a very Marxian manner the metabolic relations between humans, places, capital, and water. This is a rich chapter to understand keywords such as hydro-social cycles and waterscapes. This chapter explains some concepts of water justice. It is a bibliographic review and a discursive analysis of politicians and technocrats that worked to modernize the waters of Spain to "develop" the country. There is a lot of information from governmental institutions, and quotes from people that worked as engineers or planners. 

José Londoño

Neoliberalism's promise of a free and continuous flow of people, things, and ideas clearly does not apply to natural resources in our modern world and becomes particularly complex when it comes to the free flow of water. In Mumbai, just like in many other megacities around the world, water punctuates the rhythm, scale, and time of its citizens. Water distribution and management is timed and permeates everything from industrial activities to the time of day when kids can shower to go to school. In Mumbai, access to water services is reflective and productive of the relationship its citizens maintain with state institutions, and the administration of this vital resource has become a mode of rule. 

María Villalpando