Scaling discourse analysis: Experiences from Hermanus, South Africa and Walvis Bay, Namibia1

1. In a companion article (Debbané & Keil, 2004), it was argued that urban environmental justice movements around the world constituted a challenge to common practices and discourses of ecological modernization but that environmental justice had to be conceptualized and understood in its specific environments.

Abstract

Scaling discourse analysis refers to the necessity to consider environmental discourse a multi-dimensional and diversified practice. Depending on the various levels of state and society at which environmental policies are applied and depending on the geographical scale at which their solution is sought, we have to differentiate both policy processes and outcomes in environmental politics. We introduce the importance of scale in mapping the multiple trajectories through which complex and intertwined relations of power produce and reproduce uneven geographies in the area of urban environmental policy. More specifically, we are seeking to cast light on the relationships between scale, discourse and the politics of urban environments. Using an approach influenced by urban political ecology, the relevant discourses here are constructed in a triangle of terms: urban, ecology and policy. In this triangle, there are no givens and invariables. Its three points are constituted through contested discourses and practices. We approach our analysis from an understanding of urban water policies in two municipalities Namibia and South Africa as the outcome of a discursive and material practice operating at various levels of state and society and as an integral part of wider processes of social and political change.

Keywords:

• Scale
• discourse
• urban environmental policy
• water
• Southern Africa

Acknowledgement

Research for this paper was supported by a Faculty of Environmental Studies Small Research Grant and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Small Research Grant. Roger Keil thanks Robin Bloch for generous support of his research in Walvis Bay. The Walvis Bay, Namibia section of the paper also benefited greatly from conversations with Martin Amedieck, Hungiree Wilson Billawer, André Brümmer, Kakujaha Kahepako and David Uushona at the Municipality of Walvis Bay.

Notes

1. In a companion article (Debbané & Keil, 2004), it was argued that urban environmental justice movements around the world constituted a challenge to common practices and discourses of ecological modernization but that environmental justice had to be conceptualized and understood in its specific environments.

2. Limited because it reviews a very thin slice of the urban literature which deals with discourse. The paper has cultural blinders (it is very US and UK centred) and focuses on geography but seems to make claims about urban studies, in general. For an earlier review see Collins, 2000.

3. For a fascinating account and in-depth analysis of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project see Bond (2002).

4. Coloured communities in the Western Cape Province (which includes Hermanus) are descendants of interracial relationships during the colonial era between African and Malay slaves and European settlers.

5. See RDSN (2000) and Bond & Ruiters (2002), for an in-depth analysis of South Africa's water policies. Case studies on neoliberal water reforms in post-apartheid South Africa include Bakker & Hemson (2000), Beall et al. (2000), Bond (2002), McDonald (2002), McDonald & Pape (2003), Ruiters (2003).