Muddling Through Waste: Self Governance and Collective Action in the Wastewater Commons

This chapter describes the process of commoning and de-commoning around wastewater. It is based on a series of studies conducted over the last 15 years. It relies on a qualitative research design employing ethnographic approaches that involve direct association with and immersion in the context of the research. In a context of urbanization and increased climate variability and change, resource users in peri-urban Gurgaon organize themselves by devising institutions or rules for collective action in the use of wastewater. While peri-urban communities are affected by the process of urban expansion, they are not passive recipients of these changes. They devise norms for collective action in the shared use of wastewater. The paper extends the repertoire of resources that have conventionally been studied as common property resources to include wastewater. Commons researchers usually take an instrumental perspective on the commons, focusing on such questions as the conditions under which common property institutions will survive. The paper argues that commoning and de-commoning should be seen as processes, rather than viewing commons as a configuration. A peri-urban context, which is characterized by rapid change, provides fertile grounds to study these processes within a larger context of the political economy of urban and peri-urban spaces.