Article

The Social Practices of Governing Environment and Urbanization Asia

3(2) 325–341
© 2012 National Institute
Analysing Waste Water Governance of Urban Affairs (NIUA)
SAGE Publications
in a Delhi Slum Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi, Singapore,
Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/0975425312473228
http://eua.sagepub.com
Anna Zimmer and Patrick Sakdapolrak

Abstract
Delhi’s slums face recurrent and disturbing waste water-related problems: overflowing drains, stag-
nation of sewerage near or within houses, and subsequent mosquito breeding cause difficulties
for everyday life and serious health hazards. The question arises for the affected people as well as
administration, how to deal with this tremendous challenge? Governance is defined as ‘exercise
of authority, control, management, power of government’ (World Bank, 1992, p. 3) and is used to
explain differential outcomes of development interventions. It is widely recognized to be the task of
the state, the private sector and civil society conjunctly (UNDP, 1997). Yet, the development debate
is suggestive of a rather organized process of governance; of negotiations that lead to the identifica-
tion of a common goal; and of a rational, technical, and somewhat apolitical management of means
of reaching this goal. From this perspective, the waste water situation in Delhi’s slums presents a
clear case of governance failure. This article aims at shedding these assumptions and the conclusion
they point at, and rather expose the scattered, piece-meal and conflict-ridden character of gover-
nance practices and outcomes in the urban everyday. It therefore takes a bottom-up perspective on
governance, starting from the empirical evidence of waste water governance in one slum cluster in
west Delhi.

Keywords
Governance, waste water, slums, India, Bourdieu, Foucault

Introduction
Waste water governance in Delhi’s slums presents a double challenge to urban governance.1 First,
the city of approximately 16.7 million inhabitants (Census of India, 2011) houses an estimated 19.1
per cent of them in slums (Dupont, 2008: 83). To gain control over these populations, a Jhuggi
Jhompri2 Removal Scheme was initiated as early as 1958 under the Delhi Development Authority
and responsibility for the (destruction and resettlement of) slums shifted back and forth between the
State and the Municipal level over the next decades (Jervis Read, 2010: 25). In 2010, the department
shifted to the State again, now being known as the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (GNCTD,
2010).

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

326 Anna Zimmer and Patrick Sakdapolrak

Second, Delhi faces an enormous problem with regard to waste water in general. UNDP (2006: 114)
estimates that four-fifth of domestic waste water in the city are released into drains untreated. At the
root of the problem lies the growing consumption of water in conjunction with the lack, underutiliza-
tion and dysfunction of the sewer network as well as treatment facilities (CSE, 2007: 101; Government
of NCT of Delhi, 2006: 47). Thus, the network reaches only 65–70 per cent of Delhi’s population
(Government of NCT of Delhi, 2006: 49). The majority of slums remain un-served. The chosen research
area, a settlement of around 25 years, is characteristic of the non-served areas of Delhi in that the
waste water facilities consist of open storm water rains used to evacuate household sewage as well.
Due to silted drains, overflow is very common, exposing residents to ongoing health hazards and
inconveniences.
How then does the state attempt to govern waste water in the slums? Talking about the governance of
slums and their residents in general with administrative staff in Delhi one often hears a variation of the
following sentence of a senior bureaucrat of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD)3 Slum
Department: ‘They [migrants] can’t be stopped [from coming to Delhi] since this is a democracy’.4 This
statement, translating a certain angst of ‘uncontrollable’ populations as well as helplessness of the
authorities—and maybe the wish to have access to other, undemocratic means of governance in order to
control them—stands in stark contrast to the discourse on the state’s ability to reach its goal of a ‘slum-
free Delhi’.5 While aiming at resettling the so-called ‘encroachers’ to the periphery of the metropolis, the
state employees today express their feelings of facing an overwhelming agency of slum dwellers: they
‘just come’, ‘just build’, and ‘just resell’ their resettlement plots.6 Somehow, slum-dwellers seem not that
easy to govern.
And waste water, too, has shown to be reluctant to ‘behave’ as planned: despite the investment of
several hundred crores of rupees over the last decades in the expansion of sewer lines and sewage treat-
ment plants, the water quality in the Yamuna river has but declined (CSE, 2007), and exposure in slums
is still the order of the day. And yet, Delhi’s (and India’s) growing international ambitions, have given
new impetus to control the unpleasant, ‘filthy’ and health-threatening waste water situation in the last
decade (GoI Ministry of Environment & Forest & GNCTD Planning Department, 2001: 49). The ‘will
to improve’ (Li, 2007) the urban landscape in order to attract foreign capital is translated in a number of
governance reforms the state has initiated recently, including the formulation of a National Urban
Sanitation Policy in 2008. As state attempts to govern are in full swing, therefore, the study of waste
water governance in Delhi’s slums offers the opportunity to observe practices of governing very
directly.
Against this background, the main question addressed in this article is: How does waste water gover-
nance actually work? This first section has given a brief introduction to the problematic through which
we attempt at recasting governance processes in a more ‘bottom-up’, practices-oriented fashion. The
next section presents the concept of governance and the theoretical problems that the current debates
pose. Arguing that power relations remain undertheorized in these debates, we introduce Foucault’s
concept of government as powerful practice and Bourdieu’s field concept to enrich the analysis. We will
identify the actors in the field of waste water governance, discuss practices of various actors in this field,
and analyze day-to-day governance as a play with rules. In the conclusion, we will point out the advan-
tages of analysing waste water governance as social practices with insights of Bourdieu’s and Foucault’s
social theories and highlight the implications of this perspective for the understanding of the empirical
case from Delhi.

Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3, 2 (2012): 325–341

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

The Social Practices of Governing 327

Theoretical Debates: Contradictory Governanace Processes in

Multiple Arenas
To analyse the waste water realities in Delhi’s slums as outcomes of governance processes, a reflection on
the concept of governance is required. A major distinction exists within the social sciences between defini-
tions of governance that describe a new phenomenon in the way of governing, and definitions that use
governance as an analytical tool (Pierre & Peters, 2000: 24). The ‘descriptive’ dimension of governance
focuses on identifying, characterizing and explaining changes in ways of steering and reformulates clas-
sical concerns of political science—for instance questions of accountability or legitimacy—with regard
to these changes. Governance in this context refers to ‘forms of steering that are less hierarchical (…),
rather decentralised, open to self-organisation, and inclusive of non-state actors’ (Biermann et al.,
2009: 4). New actors, new organizational structures, and new modes of communication have appeared
(Swyngedouw, 2005: 1991–92). Accordingly, we have witnessed a shift from hierarchical and rigid
government to flexible forms of governance in which the state is but one actor among several cooper-
ating entities (Chandhoke, 2003: 2959). This understanding opens the door to viewing governance as
a highly complex process in which contradictory interests and goals are the norm rather than the
exception.
The second approach uses governance very differently. As an analytical concept, governance (or gov-
erning, as in Kooiman, 2003: 3) tries to investigate how exactly societies steer themselves, and how
negotiation processes work among actors (Schmitt, 2005: 39). These processes are described as interac-
tions between mutually dependent actors aimed at solving societal problems (Kooiman, 2003: 4;
Schimank, 2007: 29). From this point of view, there has been no transition from government to gover-
nance; rather we have witnessed a change in governance modes. This second approach leads towards a
perspective where governance is something that takes place in day-to-day interactions and in a multiplic-
ity of arenas, thus turning the attention towards more than just formal negotiations between government
agencies, business representatives, or civil society groups.

Re-introducing Power: Enriching the Governanace Debate with

Foucault and Bourdieu
While addressing the waste water questions that arise in Delhi’s slums, however, a major shortcoming of
the current development-oriented governance debates is thrown open: So far the debate on governance
has left the role of power relations undertheorized.7 If ‘water and power mutually constitute each other’
a perspective which focuses on power is urgently needed. We therefore attempt to expand the debate by
looking at governance through the lenses of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu. Michel Foucault, hav-
ing died before the re-launch of governance as a concept, has not published on governance as such—yet
his work on government8 and governmentality is of extensive use to better understand the powerful
practices that individuals or groups use in order to govern others. Pierre Bourdieu, too, cannot be consid-
ered a governance theorist and does not use the terminology of governance (Schwartz, 2003: 141). In
fact, as his later works indicate (e.g., Bourdieu, 1998b), he rejects a lot of what is advocated from a gov-
ernance perspective, particularly the normative claims about ‘good governance’ and the neo-liberal

Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3, 2 (2012): 325–341

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

328 Anna Zimmer and Patrick Sakdapolrak

agenda that often accompanies this discourse. Yet, his concept of fields and capital as well as his remarks
on the state and bureaucracy provide useful insights which enable us to understand governance processes
as negotiated practices.
We chose to shift back and forth between both perspectives despite theoretical contradictions.
These contradictions are mainly situated at the level of the conceptualization of the individual. While
Bourdieu understands individuals as actors, who use strategies and capital to negotiate their position
in the field, Foucault insists that modern forms of subjectivities and the way we perceive our ability to
act are themselves determined by larger processes of power. Also, Bourdieu emphasizes that power is
a capital, and thus resource actors are endowed with. But Foucault understands power as a shifting
relation and not in terms of a possession someone has. Although we are aware of these frictions, we
were interested in exploring the scope for complementarities. The following sections gather a number
of theoretical insights which in our view are particularly helpful to recast governance in a practices-
oriented light.

Waste Water Governance as a Field of Struggle

Two theoretical remarks of Bourdieu are particularly useful for the analysis of governance: the notion
of field as well as the understanding of the state bureaucracy and its power to play with rules. Firstly,
governance can be conceived as a field. As such, governance processes and interactions represent an
arena of struggle and competition for control over resources that are at stake and valued by the actors
in the field (e. g., waste water regulation) (Sakdapolrak, 2010). The field of governance is a structured
system of actors occupying differing positions of power (e. g., bureaucracy, citizens), which are formed
by various species of capital (e. g., law, rights, money, networks) (Bourdieu, 1998a: 48–49). As capi-
tal—described as social energy or power that enables actors to act within a field (Bourdieu, 1983:
183–84)—is unevenly distributed, one characteristic of the field of governance is its asymmetric power
relations (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 2006: 127). Powerful actors (like state representatives) who are
endowed with the largest volume and best structured species of capital, are in the position to set the
rules that determine the functioning of the field (op. cit., p. 132). Using the notion of the field as an
analytical tool to study governance offers a way to look at processes without focusing narrowly on a
centralized state. Rather, the field analysis allows us to study actors who are involved in conflicts and
policy formation at multiple and crosscutting levels and areas. It is an instrument by which various actors
involved in governance processes can be identified and understood. The concept of the field therefore
draws the attention to a wide range of power centres that are involved (Schwartz, 2003: 151).
Following this approach, the regulation of waste water in Delhi’s slums is a part of the struggles that
take place in a territorial field (Bourdieu, 2006: 28–34). Actors aim at controlling the urban space and the
regulation of waste water within that space. Bourdieu’s concept helps focussing on the main players in
the field and understanding their logics and interests. In Delhi, the field of waste water governance is set
up of three main groups of actors: the bureaucrats, the politicians and slum residents. In the particular
case studied, NGOs do not play a role.
Although waste water has not played the same role in nation building as water, leading to the creation
of powerful ‘hydrocracies’, the state and its bureaucratic actors are the dominant actors in the waste
water field, too. The regulation of waste water is part of the general interest of the state to claim control

Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3, 2 (2012): 325–341

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

The Social Practices of Governing 329

over its territory—a claim that is based on the self-declared duty for the rational and planned urban
development, expressed in the Delhi Master Plan. The competition over international investments, as has
been commented on above, and the need to create an ‘attractive’ urban environment has recently pushed
the state to increase its effort in waste water governance.
Bureaucratic actors from several departments and at different levels are involved in the field (see
Figure 1): Of special interest is the staff of the Department of Environment Management Services
(DEMS), as well as of the aforementioned Slum and JJ-Department, both under the Municipal Corporation
of Delhi (MCD) at the time of research.
The DEMS, which has the mandate to maintain hygiene and cleanliness in the city, has an extensive
decentralized structure. It is represented in each of Delhi’s 12 zones by one or two Sanitary Superintendants,
each assisted by one or more Chief Sanitary Inspectors. In the administrative units under the zones, the
wards, DEMS is represented by a Sanitary Inspector as well as one or more Assistant Sanitary Inspectors,
a number of Sanitary Guides and finally the sweepers and scavengers (in Hindi ‘safai karamchari’).
The Slum and JJ Department, whose mandate is the provision of basic amenities and the resettlement
of squatters has less staff in the field. The Department’s Town Planner Cell and Administrative Wing are
located at the Headquarters. It is only its Engineering Wing which is represented in three Circle Offices
within the city. In each circle office, a Superintending Engineer (SE) reports to the Chief Engineer at the
Headquarters. He is assisted by three Field Executive Engineers (EE), one EE for Enforcement and Land
Acquisition, one EE for Planning, as well as several Assistant Engineers and Junior Engineers. Next to
these two Departments, several Departments are responsible for road and drain construction (Public
Works Dept. and Flood Dept., to name just two); and parastatals such as the Delhi State Industrial and
Infrastructure Development Corporation (DSIIDC) and Delhi Jal Board (DJB) play a role in infrastruc-
ture provision, too.
Between the bureaucrats interviewed in the course of research, colliding logics of practices can be
identified. Some employees, such as the Sanitary Guide (S.G.) or the Superintendent Engineer of the
Engineering Wing of the MCD in the zonal offices reveal a logic according to which slums are consid-
ered to be unplanned and illegal, therefore, illegitimate settlements and are not entitled to state services.
Exemptions are justified on ‘humanitarian grounds’.9 But the bureaucratic logic of non-provision of
services to slums also collides with the logic of the self-proclaimed moral duty of the state to take care
of all its citizens. Another officer of the Slum Department thus points out that slum dwellers do deserve
state services.10 The result is a gray zone over which struggle is increasingly carried out through the
juridical system, with contradictory outcomes (Dupont & Ramanathan, 2008).
The second important group of actors in the field are political representatives at municipal, state and
national level: Municipal Councillor (MC), Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) and Member of
Parliament (MP). As politicians, they formally represent the concerns of the citizens and have the interest
to be re-elected. The votes they obtained in the last elections are part of the political capital politicians
are endowed with. It gives them weight under the democratic governance set-up that Delhi enjoys.
Formally, cleaning of drains in Delhi is under the Municipality; yet, in our specific case, the two
Municipal Councillors (MC) in whose constituencies the investigated slum lies are family members of
the Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) so that the MLA has taken over the responsibilities. This
concentration of political power within one family is the base for enormous opportunities to act and
pursue interests. Moreover, the MLA’s political and bureaucratic networks allow him considerable
leverage over the administration as he is able to suggest the transfer of any bureaucrat within his con-
stituency, he is not satisfied with (also observed in other contexts, e.g., Berenschot, 2009: 131, 338).

Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3, 2 (2012): 325–341

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

 GOVERNMENT OF
NATIONAL CAPITAL TERRITORY MUNICIPAL CORPORATION OF DELHI
330

OF DELHI
Lieutenant Chief Minister Mayor Commissioner
Governor
Legislative Assembly Townhall Assembly Additional
Commissioner

Department of Slum and JJ

Environment Department
Management Director in Dty. Commissioner
Services Charge
Dty. Chief Engineer
Commissioner
Director
Relocation &
Resettlement
Sanitary
12 Zones Superintendant 3 Circles
Ward Committee
Chief Sanitary Senior Senior
Inspector Engineer Engineer

70 Constituencies Member of
Legislative Assembly Sanitary Sanitary
Inspector Inspector Executive Executive
Engineer Engineer
Assistant Sanitary
Inspector
272 Wards
Municipal Councillor Assistant Assistant
Sanitary Guide Sanitary Guide Engineer Engineer

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

Junior Junior
Safai karamchari Safai karamchari Engineer Engineer

Citizens Citizens Citizens Citizens Citizens

Figure 1. State Actors in the Waste Water Governance in Delhi

Source: Own draft.
Patricia L. McCarney
The Social Practices of Governing 331

The influence they can execute over the regulation and provision of waste water is a resource in the hand
of politicians to gain support from the citizens.
The last group of actors are the slum residents themselves. Despite considerable differences within
this group, slum dwellers’ overarching interests in the urban space can be characterized as an interest in
a space to live, a space from where to build a livelihood in the city. Their aim of living a healthy and
dignified life leads them to being interested in a functioning drainage system in their area. More specifi-
cally, the goal of the inhabitants is to achieve satisfactory cleaning of the waste water drains in the slum
by public scavengers in order to ensure the uninterrupted flow of waste water. The crucial aim here,
voiced again and again, is ‘kaam karvana’, to get work done (by someone else; as opposed to ‘kaam
karna’, to do the work oneself). The power that residents have to reach this aim results from the fact that
they are citizens with certain rights. The more specific resource they make use of is their voter ID card:
they constitute a potential electorate for any political candidate. The setting of the field of water gover-
nance in Delhi laid out here is the basis for the discussion of the day to day practice of governance that
will be analyzed in the following.

Foucault’s Concept of Governmental Power for the Analysis of

State-slum Interactions
Governance has been described as the steering of a ship, referring to its etymological root, gubernare
(Hust, 2005: 6). It is associated with giving the ship—the society, the economy, public affairs—a direc-
tion. Foucault, too, uses the metaphor of the ship when talking about the modern meaning of govern-
ment. Yet, compared with the governance discourse, Foucault’s interpretation has significant implications
which are usually not elaborated on. Steering a ship, for him, means:

being responsible for the sailors, but also taking care of the vessel and the cargo; governing a ship also involves
taking winds, reefs, storms, and bad weather into account. What characterizes government of a ship is the prac-
tice of establishing relations between the sailors whom one must safeguard, the vessel, which must be safe-
guarded, the cargo which must be brought to port, and their relations with all those eventualities like winds, reefs,
storms and so on. (Ibid.: 97)

Much more than just a preoccupation with a direction and a target, we find here an attention to
relationships. It is the moulding of and control over these relationships which is essential to try to
reach the destination of the journey. Starting from this, Foucault develops a notion of government as
‘conduct of conduct’ (Dean, 2010: 17; Gordon, 1991: 48). It designates any activity which attempts to
shape human behaviour (Dean, 2010: 18). It is therefore a social practice: an activity in which a form
of power is expressed (Dean, 2010: 18). This form of power is called governmental power (Foucault,
2007: 108). In exercising governmental power, therefore it is the relationships, the interactions that are
instrumental.
Governmental power is exercised through practices of the self—the intent to shape one’s own behav-
iour as well as practices of government and the intent to shape other’s behaviour (Dean, 2010: 20).
Although government might be outright coercive, it not necessarily has to be. In fact, domination and
self-government are intimately linked, in that domination relies on ‘processes by which the individual

Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3, 2 (2012): 325–341

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

332 Anna Zimmer and Patrick Sakdapolrak

acts upon himself’ (Foucault, 1993, 1997: 181). If the process of governing others is successful, people
will find themselves willing to accept being influenced by the governing actor (Füller and Marquardt,
2009: 89; Schimank, 2007: 38; Schmitt, 2005: 34; Ziai, 2003: 413). Governing practices align them-
selves to dispositifs (Foucault, 2007: 11; Mattissek, 2009: 102), also described as regimes or heteroge-
neous assemblages by Dean (2010: 40). Dean (2010: 33; ibid.: 40) distinguishes four dimensions of these
regimes: ways of seeing and perceiving; ways of thinking and knowing; ways of acting, relying on tech-
niques and technologies; and ways of forming subjects.
Different types of regimes of practices of government can be singled out in trying to understand how
human behaviour is being shaped by members of society. While Foucault himself elaborated on two
major regimes of practices—discipline as a tool for regulating individual humans’ behaviour (Foucault,
1977) and biopower for regulating whole populations (Foucault, 2010, see also Lemke, 2007: 49)—the
concept has been extended and substantiated by several scholars in the course of the growth and deepen-
ing of neo-liberalism. In a regime of discipline (Foucault, 1991), subjects are made visible through total
and perpetual observation, in other words, surveillance. Importantly, disciplining allows punishing indi-
viduals in case they did wrong—and the fear of punishment they develop leads them to govern them-
selves. Neoliberal forms of surveillance do not rely on constant visibility of the individuals to be con-
trolled. Rather, they take the shape of regimes of performance. These rest upon defining parameters to
assess a person’s or an organization’s feats; benchmarking is the most prominent means introduced to
judge whether an actor or agency is ‘underperforming’ or not (Swyngedouw, 2005: 1998). This assess-
ment is supposed to be followed by acts of self-government.
More indirect practices of government rely on the self-conduct of individuals even more exclusively.
They do so by trying to shape people’s subjectivities.11 In regimes of agency, the governed should learn
to understand themselves as able to manage their own risks, to change their situation and should over-
come mentalities of dependency (Dean, 2010: 197; Jessop, 2002: 459; Swyngedouw, 2005: 1998). In
regimes of citizenship, norms such as ‘civility and civicness’ (Roy, 2009: 160), in short what is defined
as a good citizen, influence people’s understanding of their role in the city as well as expectations from
its citizens the state will be able to voice and enforce with legitimacy.
The empirical example shows how governing practices by politicians and bureaucrats translate into
individuals trying to govern slum residents in their relationships with public space, the resources they use
and the waste they produce by claiming a subject position of state representative. They try to conduct resi-
dents’ interaction with these things in a certain direction—most importantly for our investigation, to stop
them from what the authorities perceive as ‘spoiling their own environment’,12 for instance disposing off
their solid waste in the open drains. But residents of the slums, too, try to govern state representatives and
refuse the position assigned to them. Inhabitants thus try to influence the government officials to provide
public sanitation services in the form of scavengers who clean the drains regularly and thoroughly. The next
two sections look into practices both groups, state representatives and residents, use to govern each other.

Practices of State Representatives

Day-to-day governing interactions take place between employees of the Department of Environment
Management Services posted in the ward, the Municipal Councillors (or, in the case study, the Member
of Legislative Assembly) and residents. These interactions take place on a canvas of city-wide social
relations that place slum residents in an unfavourable position. Sharan (2002: 34) notes that ‘there is a

Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3, 2 (2012): 325–341

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

The Social Practices of Governing 333

new optimism (amongst policy makers) that managing the environment can be made an individual
responsibility’. This is expressed, among others, in India’s new National Urban Sanitation Policy of
2008. It points out behaviour change as one of the major solution to the problem of unsanitary conditions
in India’s cities (Government of India and Ministry of Urban Development, 2008). People should be
encouraged to adopt ‘healthy sanitation practices’. Consciousness regarding sanitation is considered ‘the
first step in making the cities 100 per cent sanitized’ (op. cit.: 15). The Policy therefore targets educa-
tional initiatives at individual citizens and communities who supposedly have the wrong practices and
thus contribute to waste water-related problems.
According to this discourse on responsibility, exposure to waste water in residential areas prompted
by overflowing drains is the fault of (mainly poor) citizens who dispose of their solid waste in storm
water drains. Interviews with representatives of the MCD Slum Department and Engineering Wing as
well as the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) showed the prevalence of this discourse amongst higher administration
officers: Interview partners pointed out that people connected to storm water drains illegally, and that the
lesser slope of these drains inevitably led to sedimentation, choking and subsequent overflow. Therefore,
the representative of the Engineering Wing opined that ‘if the people can be disconnected, most prob-
lems will be resolved’.13 Moreover, residents of informal settlements are seen as reluctant to abstain from
open defecation, and are said to throw garbage in streets and drains, further contributing to both drainage
problems as well as health risks. An officer of the Slum Department perceived that if infrastructure such
as toilet blocks was provided in these settlements, it would be damaged as residents would mishandle it.14
He continued: ‘Somewhere they have choked the drains; they put the garbage in there when they clean
their jugghis [huts]. They are not much educated, they don’t get this kind of training; the class is like
that.’ There is therefore a strong (more or less explicit) link which is made between supposedly wrong
practices and those groups who live in slums and/or are less educated. Because ‘wrong’ practices are
discursively linked to education, educative as well as punitive measures are suggested as solutions to
waste water-related problems. Residents are supposed to learn that their practices are wrong and take
responsibility for their acts by changing their behaviour.
This view is also held at lower levels of the administration who construct slum dwellers’ behaviour as
the main cause of sanitation-related problems. Representatives of the Department of Environment
Management Services (DEMS) in the wards request residents to take their responsibilities, as they feel
the state’s effort can never be enough to solve any waste water-related problems.15 The scavengers see
people responsible for the insanitary conditions and try to induce behaviour change in the inhabitants.16
The politician suggests to slum dwellers that a different kind of behaviour is enough to solve the prob-
lems. A slum resident recalls: ‘People went to (…) [the MLA] and he said cleanliness is in your hand,
you can use a dustbin or give it [the garbage] to the scavenger’.17 The moment people turn to the politi-
cian for assistance they are turned away by him, appealing to their agency instead.18 The observed prac-
tices of governance can accordingly be identified as parts of a regime of agency where the focus is on
individuals’ responsibility, and in contrast turned away from structural issues such as the absence of
dustbins and sewers inside the slum, the paucity of sweeping services, let alone bigger issues such as the
insufficiency of affordable housing outside the slums. This discourse and the practices of governance
therefore broadly delegitimize any claims the residents might address to the state.
In addition to these more indirect practices, residents are disciplined through a number of strategies
which state representatives employ in direct interactions. This concerns especially the public scavengers
which are at the lowest rank within the Department of Environment Management Services, and are in
daily contact with residents. If scavengers feel disrespected through verbal abuses, complaints which are

Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3, 2 (2012): 325–341

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

334 Anna Zimmer and Patrick Sakdapolrak

considered unjustified, or because residents throw solid waste in sections of the drain just cleaned, or
interfere with scavengers’ cleaning, they resort to punishing inhabitants. Notably, scavengers can leave
from the spot, and decide not to clean a certain area on a particular day. Sometimes they do not come
back for several days in a row. In extremer cases scavengers punish residents by taking out the garbage
mounds from the drains and depositing them right in front of their houses, a highly offensive act accord-
ing to inhabitants’ views. In addition, the Sanitary Inspector who goes on a round regularly is authorised
to impose a fine if someone litters the public space, thus blocking drains and contributing to overflow
problems. As Foucault (2007: 6) points out, the punishment of one actor then implies at the same time
the disciplining of others who will consider their own behaviour in the light of the consequences they
witnessed.
As a result of mechanisms of responsibilization and punishing practices that are ever careful not to
encourage people to settle in slums, a smaller amount of scavengers is being deployed in such settle-
ments as compared to other colonies in the city, and staff not necessarily cleans regularly. Inhabitants
therefore are obliged to clean their drains themselves on a regular basis if they do not want to suffer the
impacts of overflowing. Especially in the rainy season inhabitants spend a considerable amount of time
to achieve the drainage of water. The powerful practices of governance employed by state representa-
tives therefore result in a socially lower position of residents of informal settlements, as direct contact
with waste water is highly stigmatized (and stigmatizing) especially in the Indian context (Douglas,
1988). However, residents are no passive subjects to state representatives’ governing practices. They, in
turn, try to conduct state representatives’ conduct as well.

Governing the State: Practices of Residents

In the context of governance debates, struggles of citizens to obtain better public services have been inte-
grated into a discourse on ‘good governance’. This discourse is an indicator for the attempt—mostly by
international donor agencies—to influence states to rethink their understanding of how to govern, and sub-
sequently, their practices of governing. For the case of India, Corbridge et al. (2005: 18–19) point out the
heightened visibility of the Indian ‘developmental state’ for its citizens: Citizens expect a certain perfor-
mance of state agencies. Discourses on privatization and participation of citizens in governance have not
fundamentally affected these expectations so far (Chandhoke, 2003). Recently, the language of good gov-
ernance has helped restructuring attempts to govern state representatives in Delhi, too. Citizens—especially
members of the middle-classes—try to create specific understandings in politicians and bureaucrats of what
a good state representative is with the helps of norms such as accountability (Centre for Civil Society,
2009). Good governance therefore has potential for being a political tool in the hands of citizens, although
this potential is very limited in comparison to the power it deploys through development agencies.
In the empirical case, however, this rather middle class-oriented discourse is not operationalized by
the inhabitants of the slum. Yet, people do have specific expectations from ‘sarkaar’, the state.19 They
talk extensively about what the scavengers are supposed to do and how they are supposed to clean.
Personal observations allowed witnessing how the scavengers’ work is constantly commented on while
they are on duty. Inhabitants feel that being paid a salary by the government creates a moral obligation
for the scavengers to clean ‘properly’. Also, as a member of society, the scavenger has moral obligations
towards the inhabitants: ‘He should think that people will have inconvenience if he is not taking it [the
garbage] on time’, a woman judges.20

Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3, 2 (2012): 325–341

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

The Social Practices of Governing 335

Slum residents also insist that the politician should feel obliged to his voters. They perceive the voting
act as a kind of deal which binds the politician morally to act in their interest.21 Also, the state is per-
ceived as invested with the duty to maintain peace and harmony. Therefore, service delivery and infra-
structural upgrading of the slum is expected in order to prevent quarrels between neighbours over dirty
streets and blocked drains.22 Therefore, ideas on what good governing is, do play a role in local
negotiations.
Residents’ practices are carried out on this background of responsibilities they vest in state represen-
tatives. They control if politicians and bureaucrats are performing as expected or not. For example,
practices by residents work towards disciplining the scavengers: inhabitants check on their work, and
comment on the lack of strictness by the Sanitary Guide. In case the performance of an actor is found
unsatisfying, residents complain to higher ranking officers or the politician, knowing that complaints can
in turn lead to a transfer of posts. Inhabitants also track the politician’s behaviour and movements. They
are thus aware of the fact that he only comes to the slum before elections, and form an opinion on
whether he is attending to their complaints or not. These forms of surveillance provide the knowledge
they rely on to use their power as electorate—and voting itself can be understood as part of a regime of
performance. Political candidates therefore have to support residents at least to some extent. This shows
for example when the politician decides to throw his weight behind waste water-related complaints:
Members of the administration feel that they have to address residents’ complaints because ‘the jugghi
[slum] people are connected with the MLA, so we have to satisfy them to satisfy the MLA. The MLA is
a politically powerful person, if he is not satisfied he can get us transferred’.23 Support by the politician
remains however extremely piece-meal. Thus, despite smaller successes, residents are not able to address
long term solutions to waste-water problems.
Despite patterns of practices identified here, it is important to note that Foucault highlights that prac-
tices are never uniform and logics such as regimes of surveillance, agency or performance never fully
determine the practices of individual actors. We will therefore discuss in the following section how
micro-politics in the study area are shaped by drawing on Bourdieu’s idea of governance as playing with
the rules.

Waste Water Governance as a Play with Rules

Next to the notion of the field, discussed above, Bourdieu’s account of the state bureaucracy (Bourdieu,
1998a: 35–74) and of rules and their evasion (Bourdieu, 2006) is useful for the governance analysis we
want to undertake. Bourdieu shows how state actors are engaged in struggles in the territorial fields over
the monopoly of rightful bureaucratic decisions as numerous state actors have the bureaucratic mandate
to act in its name (Bourdieu, 2006: 28). Bourdieu highlights that state actors are thought to be competent
and neutral servants of the general public and their position is presented as de-localized, de-particular-
ized and de-privatised. State regulations claim to be universal und rational. Yet, the bureaucratic actors
are not machines that mechanically apply bureaucratic rules (Bourdieu, 2006). Rules and regulations are
rather resources in the hand of state actors, who enforce them only if the interest to enforce them outbal-
ances the interest to make an evasion (Kalpagam, 2006).
The analysis of governance as a playing with rules as described by Bourdieu, leads away from a nar-
row consideration of rules in governance processes towards an understanding of rules in practice and
highlights the discrepancy between rules and their application. In the case study area, the duty to clean

Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3, 2 (2012): 325–341

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

336 Anna Zimmer and Patrick Sakdapolrak

the drains in the slum is with public scavengers working for the Department of Environment Management
Services (DEMS) of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), as seen above. It is their job to dig out
muck and waste of the waste water drains, to leave it on the road to dry for one to three days, and then to
pick it up and dump it in a dumping ground. According to the rules, scavengers have the duty to visit the
slum daily in order to clean the drains. But, it lies in the nature of rules that they can’t be fixed up to the
last detail (Bourdieu, 2006: 26) and therefore even the lowest level of the bureaucratic hierarchy actors,
such as the scavengers, have scope to play with the rules in order to gain profit. This play can be observed
in daily interactions between scavengers and residents.
Slum dwellers apply different strategies in order to have scavengers work according to the rule (e.g.,
clean regularly), make exemption from the rules (e.g., clean in specific occasion) or perform in a certain
manner (e.g., clean properly). Some households, in order to get the waste picked up immediately, use
economic capital and pay the scavengers some extra money. Through the exemption from the rule the
scavenger then reaps material profit. Other households try to build up a social relationship with the scav-
engers by offering food, water, or paying some money on religious festivals, in (non-direct) exchange to
getting work done by the scavenger.
In order to make the scavengers come to a certain house and get them to pick up the waste the same
day, inhabitants can also let them know that there is a special function in a certain house. The moral
obligation of not spoiling someone’s family festival, or not hindering someone in exercising his duties as
host, is used here as means to exercise power over the scavenger. This informal rule for the exemption
of formal rule is regarded as legitimate by the scavengers themselves and is therefore not contested. The
Sanitary Inspector, too, plays with the rules to achieve specific behaviour by residents. It has been men-
tioned above that he may punish inhabitants for littering on the streets. Yet, he not always chooses to do
so because ‘they are poor and struggle to eat’.24 He shows compassion and thus attempts to have inhabit-
ants indebted to him in order to make them compliant in other cases when voicing requests.
Slum dwellers, again, use the political and bureaucratic hierarchy to reach service provision. From the
perspective of the residents, the politicians are the most crucial actors in their struggle for waste water
services. Within the setting of the case study, the Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) plays a par-
ticularly important role. Most complaints about cleanliness by the inhabitants reach the Sanitary Guide
and Inspector through the MLA. The reasons for this are manifold: First of all, as mentioned in the sec-
tion on the field of waste water governance, the MLA is the actor with political capital in the arena. He
has the mandate to represent the interest of the voters in his constituency vis-à-vis the bureaucracy.
Second, as stated above, through the concentration of power of different political bodies within one
family—factual in the hand of the MLA—the MLA gains influence over bureaucratic actors at the level
of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), who are responsible for sanitation issues. As the MLA
and his family members have the interest to be re-elected they use waste water service provision among
other things as a resource to seek political profit, thus, to get electoral support. Thus, the slum residents
have—through their vote—the possibility to pressurise the politicians to act in their interest. The central
role of the MLA in the field is derived from his ability to realize exceptions from the bureaucratic rule
that slums are not provided with services by the state. In doing so he displays this power to be attached
to his person and is therefore able to reap the personal symbolic, material and political profit out of this
act.
But how can the relationship to the MLA lead to the scavengers working in the slum area? Sanitation
services request a constant cooperation of the administration. It has been mentioned above that this is
achieved through latent threat of transfer of post to the administration, which politicians are able to

Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3, 2 (2012): 325–341

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

The Social Practices of Governing 337

realize through personal networks. According to the zonal staff of DEMS, ‘there is a rule that every
three years we get transferred but, if we don’t listen to the Municipal Councillor, we get transferred in
five minutes’.25 It is therefore admitted by the MLA that ‘the scavenger’s coming to the JJ Cluster
(slum) depends on the power of the politician, if he is powerful he can manage to send them there’.26
Being aware of this possible influence of the MLA, the Sanitary Guide and Inspector comply with the
demands raised on behalf of the slum dwellers. Another result of political power over the bureaucracy
in the zone has been the change in allocation of scavengers per ward. According to the bureaucratic
rule, numbers of scavengers needed are calculated on the basis of the depth and length of drains.27 Yet,
in a zonal meeting all the Municipal Councillors of the area supported an equal repartition of scaven-
gers according to wards, a request the administration heeded to in order to satisfy the politicians.28 This
evasion of rules on request might then be used as leverage in cases where bureaucrats have in turn
demands from the politicians, such as being transferred onto a more attractive post, or pressuring higher
levels of governance for more staff in the zone.
Besides this exercise of power over the local bureaucracy, the MLA has the option to tap state resources
for the evasion of rules. Although not authorised to use his funds for upgrading of waste water infrastruc-
ture in the slum, the MLA points out that ‘the government has given silent acceptance that you should go
through the backdoor to apply for money without mentioning if it is to be done in an authorised colony
or not (…) then the work can get done’.29 This procedure gives the MLA additional power to realise eva-
sion of the rules, while reaping electoral support.
But from the perspective of the slum dwellers, the MLA’s support not consistent, obliging them to
keep raising their issue again and again. To avoid support, he can ‘hide’ himself behind the rules and
regulation and explain that he cannot do anything. By acting in this way the MLA displays his power
vis-à-vis the slum dwellers and shows them that they rely on his personal mercy to act on their behalf.
As the section has shown rules—but even more so the option of their evasion—can be considered as
a source of power that can be used in negotiation processes. The analysis of governance as a play with
the rules helps us therefore to understand the logic of non-application and alternation of rules, which is
often singled out as one of the causes of governance failure.

Conclusion
To conclude, we would like to first point out on a conceptual level the benefits of analyzing waste water
governance as social practices with insights from Foucault’s and Bourdieu’s social theories. Based on
this remarks, we will draw specific implications for the empirical case.
In this paper, we have demonstrated how Foucault’s and Bourdieu’s social theories help us in the
analysis of waste water governance. We have identified four advantages of this endeavour. First, both
authors are able to provide necessary theoretical advances in the field of governance by offering an
understanding of power. While governance approaches do discuss interactions they do not pay enough
attention to such a theorization of power so far. Second, both authors draw attention to the practices of
governance carried out within, beneath and beyond organizational structures and formalized interactions
or institutions. Conceptualizing governance with the help of Bourdieu permits us to understand gover-
nance as a field of asymmetrical power relations, and the working and diversity of the state in the every-
day become visible (see also Fuller, 2001; Oldenburg, 2006). We have shown how actors have very

Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3, 2 (2012): 325–341

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

338 Anna Zimmer and Patrick Sakdapolrak

different and sometimes competing aims–a far cry from the common goal sometimes assumed to exist in
the governance literature–and use the capital that the state offers to them in the governance ‘game’ at
individual scale. Conceptualising governance with the help of Foucault has allowed gaining insights into
how actors are actually made to act in certain ways—and how they resist these attempts at governing. As
daily interactions become legible as parts of larger patterns aimed at getting others to do what somebody
else wants, it is therefore spelled out how waste water—just like water—shapes the social relations in the
city. Therefore, third, combining both authors, we were able to render a detailed picture of slum resi-
dents’ position in the city. According to Bourdieu, citizens in slums are subordinate actors in the social
field which have to put considerable effort to attain even the most basic goods and services. Albeit they
succeed from time to time in reaching their goals, their practices do not challenge the power structure.
Following Foucault, regimes of practices can fix slum-dwellers in certain subject positions that request
continuous involvement in waste water disposal from them. This fix, however, is never static. Quite the
contrary, claims of ‘not being governed in this way’ (Foucault, 1997: 29), can offer opportunities for
resistance. To conclude, fourth, Foucault as well as Bourdieu draw attention to the conflictual character
of governance. The current messy and piece-meal waste water governance in the slums of Delhi bears
witness to the validity of this perspective. From this point of view, we can start to analyse so-called gov-
ernance failures as the outcomes of negotiations in a power-laden society.
For the case study, this kind of analysis has brought up a number of noteworthy points. First, gover-
nance is indeed a process in which different state as well as non-state actors take part. Yet, the playing
field is highly uneven and not all have the same capital to back up their claims or influence outcomes.
Slum residents are therefore in a position where more often than receiving state services they find them-
selves obliged to clean waste water drains themselves or live in unhealthy conditions, exposed to waste
water. Second, interactions between actors cannot be conceptualized as a negotiation between equals.
Rather, governing practices aim at assigning the subject position of the governed to others, therefore
producing a highly politicized waste waterscape. In the majority of cases, slum inhabitants are unable to
exercise power over state actors’ conduct. An exception here is the scavengers, themselves in an extremely
low social position, with which residents are in constant struggle. Finally, outcomes of waste water gov-
ernance are not the result of wrong rules or the inability to implement them. Instead, the dynamic play
with rules is part and parcel of the ‘everyday governance’ (Zimmer, 2011) that takes place in the urban
space. Acknowledging these processes and integrating them consciously in policy making might there-
fore in fact show the way forward to achieving more satisfying and equal service delivery to the most
disadvantaged urban dwellers.

Notes
1. These problems have been investigated by the first author during eleven months of fieldwork between February
2008 and December 2009.
2. Jhuggi Jhompri (JJ) in Delhi designates squatters on public land living in makeshift housing structures.
3. Since the time of field work the Municipal Corporation has been split up in three bodies. These changes are not
taken into account in this article.
4. The sources of original quotes have to remain anonymous and are presented in short form here: KU-SLUM,
personal communication, 24 November 2008.
5. Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, 15 August 2009.
6. (KU-SLUM, personal communication, 24 November 2008; HA-SI, personal communication, 7 November
2008; CH-SG, personal communication, 10 November, 2008).

Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3, 2 (2012): 325–341

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

The Social Practices of Governing 339

7. Political ecologists have in contrast contributed significant insights into the importance of power for the flow of
water (see among others).
8. Government is used by Foucault to designate an activity of governing, not as an institution of the state, see
‘Foucault’s concept of governmental power for the analysis of state-slum-interactions’.
9. KU-SLUM, personal communication, 24 November 2008.
10. VE-SLUM, personal communication, 20 October 2009.
11. From a Bourdieu ‘esque’ kind of view, the state plays a major role in the production and reproduction of
instruments for the construction of social reality. As an organizational structure and authority that regulates
social practices, the state exercises a permanent influence for the construction of durable dispositions, the
habitus in Bourdieus term, uniformly on all actors (Bourdieu, 1998; Kalpagam, 2006). The state takes charge
of the enforcement and internalization of the basic classification principles and thus moulds mental structures
and imposes common principles of vision and division and forms of thinking. The obedience to the state order
is arising out of ‘disposition of the body’ (Kalpagam, 2006).
12. SU-DEMS, personal communication, 24 November 2008.
13. VE-ENG, personal communication, 5 January 2009.
14. KU-SLUM, personal communication, 24 September 2009.
15. HA-SG, personal communication, 6 November 2009.
16. VI-SK, personal communication, 4 November 2008.
17. CH, personal communication, 19 November 2009.
18. Yet, he will not do so consistently—being able to ‘get something done’ for one’s electorate is still the best reason
to be re-elected (Berenschot 2009: 114). Maintaining people in dependency therefore takes place at the same
time.
19. Sarkaar is more precisely translated as government. In order not to confuse the reader with Foucault’s use of the
word government, however, we are translating it here as state.
20. CH, personal communication, 19 November 2009.
21. ME, personal communication, 1 September 2009; HL, personal communication, 31 August 2009.
22. ME, personal communication, 1 September 2009.
23. CH-SG, personal communication, 10 November 2008.
24. HA-SI, personal communication, 6 November 2009.
25. NK-SS, personal communication, 29 October 2009.
26. CH-MLA, personal communication, 30 December 2008.
27. If up to nine inches (~ 23 cm) deep, one scavenger has to look after 3500 running feet (little more than 1 km)
of drain. Between nine inches and four feet (~ 1.20 m), one scavenger has to look after 2500 feet (~ 760 m).
SU-DEMS, personal communication, 23 September 2009.
28. RA-SS, personal communication, 10 November 2009.
29. CH-MLA, personal communication, 30 December 2008.

References
Bakker, K. (2003). A political ecology of water privatization. Studies in Political Economy, 70, 35–58.
Berenschot, W. (2009). Riot politics: Communal violence and state-society mediation in Gujarat, India. PhD
dissertation, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam.
Biermann, F., Betsill, M., Gupta, J., Kanie, N., Lebel, L., Liverman, D., Schroeder, H., & Siebenhüner, B. (2009).
Earth system governance: People, places, and the planet. Science and implementation plan of the earth system
governance project: Bonn International Human Dimension Programme on Global Environmental Change.
Bourdieu, P. (1983). Ökonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital (The forms of capital). In R.
Kreckel (Ed.), Soziale Ungleichheiten (pp. 183–98). Göttingen: Schwartz.

Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3, 2 (2012): 325–341

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

340 Anna Zimmer and Patrick Sakdapolrak

Bourdieu, P. (1998a). Praktische Vernunft: Zur Theorie des Handelns (Practical reason: On the theory of action).
Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
——— (1998b). Gegenfeuer: Wortmeldungen im Dienste des Widerstands gegen die neoliberale Invasion (Counter-
fire: Statements in the service of resistance against the neoliberal invasion). Konstanz: UVK.
——— (2006). Das Recht und die Umgehung des Rechts (The law and the evation of law). In M. Florian & F.
Hillebrandt (Eds), Pierre Bourdieu: Neue Perspektiven für die Soziologie der Wirtschaft (pp. 19–41). Wiesbaden:
VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Bourdieu, P. & Wacquant, L.J.D. (2006). Reflexive Anthropologie (Reflexive Anthropology). Frankfurt a. M.:
Suhrkamp.
Budds, J. (2004). Power, nature and neoliberalism: The political ecology of water in Chile. Singapore Journal of
Tropical Geography, 25(3), 322–342.
Budds, J. & Hinojosa, L. (2012). Restructuring and rescaling water governance in mining contexts: The co-production
of waterscapes in Peru. Water Alternatives, 5(1), 119–137.
Census of India. (2001). Total Slum Population. Census of India,
Chandhoke, N. (2003). Governance and the pluralisation of the state: Implications for democratic citizenship.
Economic and Political Weekly, 38(28), 2957–2968.
CSE. (2007). Sewage canal: How to clean the Yamuna. Centre for Science and Environment, Delhi.
Dean, M. (2010). Governmentality: Power and rule in modern society. London: Sage.
Dupont, V. & Ramanathan, U. (2008). The courts and the squatter settlements in Delhi—Or the intervention of the
Judiciary in urban governance. In I. Baud and J. de Wit (Eds), New forms of urban governance in India: Shifts,
models, networks and contestations (pp. 312–343). New Delhi: Sage.
Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline and punish: The birth of prison. London: Penguin Books.
———. (1993). About the beginning of the hermeneutics of the self. Political Theory, 21(2), 198–227.
———. (1997). The politics of truth: Semiotext(e) foreign agents. New York: Semiotext(e).
———. (2007). Security, territory, population. Lectures at the College De France 1977–1978. Houndmills: Palgrave
Macmillan.
———. (2010). The birth of biopolitics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Füller, H. & Marquardt, N. (2009). Gouvernementalität in der humangeographischen Diskursforschung
(Governmentality in the social geographical discourse research). In G. Glasze and A. Mattissek (Eds),
Handbuch Diskurs und Raum. Theorien und Methoden für die Humangeographie sowie die sozial-und
kulturwissenschaftliche Raumforschung (pp. 83–106). Bielefeld: Transcript.
Gordon, C. (1991). Governmental rationality: An introduction. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller (Eds), The
Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality (pp. 1–52). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Government of India and Ministry of Urban Development. (2008). National urban sanitation policy. New Delhi:
Government of India.
Government of NCT of Delhi (2006). Delhi Human development report 2006. New Delhi: Government of India.
Hust, E. (2005). Introduction: Problems of urbanization and urban Governance in India. In E. Hust and M. Mann
(Eds), Urbanization and governance in India (pp. 1–26). New Delhi: Manohar, Centre des Sciences Humaines,
South Asia Institute.
Jervis Read, C. (2010). Making Delhi like Paris: Space and the politics of development in an East Delhi resettlement
colony. Ph.D dissertation, University of Sussex, Brighton.
Jessop, B. (2002). Liberalism, neoliberalism, and urban governance: A state, theoretical perspective. Antipode,
34(3), 452–472.
——— (2007). From micro-powers to governmentality: Foucault’s work on statehood, state formation, statecraft
and state power. Political Geography, 26(1), 34–40.
Kalpagam, U. (2006). Thinking the state with Bourdieu and Foucault. In R. Lardinois and M. Thapan (Eds), Reading
Pierre Bourdieu in a dual context: Essays from India and France (pp. 37–55). London.
Kooiman, J. (2003). Governing as governance. London: Sage.

Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3, 2 (2012): 325–341

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

The Social Practices of Governing 341

Lemke, T. (2007). An indigestible meal: Foucault, governmentality and state theory. Distinktion: Scandinavian
Journal of Social Theory, 8(2), 43–64.
Loftus, A. & Lumsden, F. (2008): Reworking hegemony in the urban waterscape. Transactions of the Institute of
British Geography, 33, 109–126.
Mattissek, A. (2009). Exkurs: Zentrale Begriffe im Kontext des Gouvernementalitätskonzeptes von Foucault
(Excursus: Central terms in the context of Foucault’s concept of governmentality). In G. Glasze and A. Mattissek
(Eds), Handbuch Diskurs und Raum. Theorien und Methoden für die Humangeographie sowie die sozial-und
kulturwissenschatliche Raumforschung (pp. 101–102). Bielefeld: Transcript.
Molle, F., Mollinga, P. P., & Wester, P. (2009). Hydraulic bureaucracies and the hydraulic mission: Flows of water,
flows of power. Water Alternatives, 2(3), 328–349.
Norman, E. S., Bakker, K., & Cook, C. (2012). Introduction to the themed section: Water governance and the politics
of scale. Water Alternatives, 5(1), 52–61.
Pierre, J. & Peters, B. G. (2000). Governance, politics and the state: Political analyses. Houndmills: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Roy, A. (2009). Civic governmentality: The politics of inclusion in Beirut and Mumbai. Antipode, 41(1), 159–179.
Sakdapolrak, P. (2010). Orte und Räume der Health Vulnerability. Bourdieus Theorie der Praxis für die Analyse
von Krankheit und Gesundheit in Megaurbanen Slums von Chennai, Südindien. (Places and spaces of health
vulnerability. Bourdieu’s theory of practice for the analysis of health and illness in megaurban slums of Chennai,
South India). Saarbrücken: Verlag für Entwicklungspolitik.
Schimank, U. (2007). Elementare Mechanismen (Fundamental mechanisms). In A. Benz, S. Lütz, U. Schimank and
G. Simonis (Eds), Handbuch Governance. Theoretische Grundlagen und empirische Anwendungsfelder (pp.
29–45). Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften.
Schmitt, T. (2005). Jemaa el Fna Square in Marrakech: Changes to a social space and to a UNESCO masterpiece of the oral
and intangible heritage of humanity as a result of global influences. The Arab World Geographer, 8(4), 173–195.
Schwartz, D. I. (2003). Pierre Bourdieu’s political sociology and governance perspectives. In Bang, H.P. (Ed.),
Governance as social and political communication. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Swyngedouw, E. (1997). Power, nature and the city: The conquest of water and the political ecology of urbanization
in Guayaquil, Ecuador: 1880–1990. Environment and Planning A, 29(2), 311–332.
———. (2004). Social power and the urbanization of water. Flows of Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Swyngedouw, E. (2005). Governance innovation and the citizen: The janus face of governance-beyond-the-State.
Urban Studies, 42(11), 1991–2006.
UNDP. (1997). Governance for sustainable human development. A UNDP policy document. Retreived from http://
mirror.undp.org/magnet/policy/ (accessed 9 January 2012).
———. (2006). Human Development Report. New York: United Nations Development Programme.
World Bank (1992). Governance and Development. Washington: World Bank.
Ziai, A. (2003). Governance und Gouvernementalität’ (Governance and governmentality). Nord-Süd aktuell, 17(3),
411–422.
Zimmer, A. (2011). Everyday governance of the waste waterscapes. A Foucauldian analysis in Delhi’s informal
settlements. PhD dissertation, University of Bonn, Bonn.

Anna Zimmer, Centre de Sciences Humaines, Aurangzeb Road, New Delhi, India.
Email: anna.zimmer@csh-delhi.com

Dr Patrick Sakdapolrak, University of Bonn, Department of Geography, Meckenheimer Allee, Bonn,

Germany. Email: sakdapolrak@giub.uni-bonn.de

Environment and Urbanization Asia, 3, 2 (2012): 325–341

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015

Downloaded from eua.sagepub.com at FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIV on June 4, 2015