This paper presents a historical analysis of the evolution of the World Bank's policies on urban water supply networks, from 1960 to the late 1980s. The analysis frames urban water supply as an attempt (contested and incomplete) to extend the biopolitical power of developmental states. I argue that the World Bank's agenda was predicated on a set of contradictions (and an untenable public/private binary) that contributed to the emergence of ‘state failure’ arguments by the late 1980s. This perspective enables critical reflection on the historical origins of the concept of ‘state failure’, and on contemporary debates over urbanization, infrastructure, and development.
AgrawalA, 2005Environmentality: Technologies of Government and the Making of Subjects (Duke University Press, Durham, NC)
2.
AlloucheJFingerM, 2001Water Privatisation: Trans-national Corporations and the Re-regulation of the Water Industry (Taylor and Francis, London)
3.
AlsayyadNRoyA, 2006, “Medieval modernity: On citizenship and urbanism in a global era”Space and Polity101–20
4.
AppaduraiA, 2001, “Deep democracy: Urban governmentality and the horizon of politics”Environment and Urbanization13(2) 23–43
5.
AppaduraiA, 2002, “Deep democracy: Urban governmentality and the horizon of politics”Public Culture1421–47
6.
BakkerK, 2007, “The commons versus the commodity: ‘alter’-globalization, privatization, and the human right to water in the global South”Antipode39430–455
7.
BakkerK, 2010Privatizing Water: Governance Failure and the World's Urban Water Crisis (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY)
8.
BashfordA, 2006, “Global biopolitics and the history of world health”History of the Human Sciences1967–88
9.
BaylissKFineB, 2007Privatization and Alternative Public Sector Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa: Delivering on Electricity and Water (Palgrave Macmillan, London)
10.
BlackM, 1998Learning What Works: A 20-Year Retrospective View on International Water and Sanitation Cooperation, 1978–1998 (UNDEP-World Bank Water and Sanitation Program, World Bank, Washington, DC)
11.
BloklandMBraadbaartOSchwartzK, 1999Private Business, Public Owners (VROM, The Hague)
12.
BobbioN, 1997Democracy and Dictatorship: The Nature and Limits of State Power (Polity Press, Cambridge)
13.
BraunB, 2007, “Biopolitics and the molecularization of life”Cultural Geographies146–28
14.
BuddsJ, 2008, “Whose scarcity? The hydrosocial cycle and the changing waterscape of La Ligua river basin, Chile”, in Contentious Geographies: Environment, Meaning, Scale Eds GoodmanMBoykoffMEveredK (Ashgate, Aldershot, Hants) pp 59–68
15.
CammackP, 2004, “What the World Bank means by poverty reduction, and why it matters”New Political Economy9189–211
16.
CaufieldC, 1997Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations (Macmillan, London)
17.
ChantC (Ed.), 1989Science, Technology and Everyday Life 1870–1950 (Routledge, London)
18.
ChatterjeeP, 2004Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World(Columbia University Press, New York)
19.
ComaroffJ, 2002, “Governmentality, materiality, legality, modernity: On the colonial state in Africa”, in Perspectives on African Modernities Eds DeutschJ-GProbstPSchmidtH (James Currey, London) pp 107–134
20.
ConcaK, 2005Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
21.
CooperFStolerA, 1989, “Tensions of empire: Colonial control and visions of rule”American Ethnologist16609–621
22.
CorbridgeSWilliamsGSrivastavaMVéronR, 2005Seeing the State: Governance and Governmentality in India (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
23.
CoutardO, 1999The Governance of Large Technical Systems (Routledge, London)
24.
EDF, 1992, “Reforming the World Bank's lending for water: An NGO critique of the World Bank's draft water policy paper”, Environmental Defense Fund, Washington, DC
EldenS, 2007b, “Governmentality, calculation, territory”Environment and Planning D: Society and Space25562–580
27.
FoucaultM, 1997, “The birth of biopolitics”, in Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth: The Essential Works of Michel Foucalt 1954–1984 Ed. RabinowP (The New Press, New York) pp 73–79
28.
FoxJBrownL D, 1998The Struggle for Accountability: The World Bank, NGOs, and Grassroots Movements (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
29.
GandyM, 1999, “The Paris sewers and the rationalization of urban space”Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series2423–44
30.
GandyM, 2002Concrete and Clay: Reworking Nature in New York City (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA)
31.
GandyM, 2006a, “Zones of indistinction: Bio-political contestations in the urban arena”Cultural Geographies13497–516
32.
GandyM, 2006b, “The bacteriological city and its discontents”Historical Geography3414–25
33.
GandyM, 2011, “Water as an object of enquiry”International Journal of Sustainable Development3132–133
34.
GoldmanM, 2001, “Constructing an environmental state: Eco-governmentality and other transnational practices of a ‘green’ World Bank”Social Problems48499–523
35.
GoldmanM, 2005Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization (Yale University Press, New Haven, CT)
36.
GoodmanD, 1999, “Agro-food studies in the ‘age of ecology’: Nature, corporeality, bio-politics”Sociologia Ruralis3917–38
37.
GoubertJ P, 1989The Conquest of Water: The Advent of Health in the Industrial Age (Polity Press, Cambridge)
38.
HarveyD, 2003The New Imperialism (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
39.
HausmanDMcPhersonM, 2006Economic Analysis, Moral Analysis, and Public Policy (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
40.
HossainS, 2012, “The informal practice of appropriation and social control—experience from a bosti in Dhaka”Environment and Urbanism doi: 10.1177/og5/6247812465803
41.
IBRD, 1971, “Water supply and sewerage: Sector program paper R7184”, reprinted 1977, in The World Bank: Its First Half Century Ed. KapurDLewisJWebbR (Brookings Institution, Washington, DC)
42.
KabeerN, 2002, “Citizenship, affiliation and exclusion: Perspectives from the south”IDS Bulletin331–15
43.
KaikaM, 2005City of Flows: Modernity, Nature and the City (Routledge, London)
44.
KanburRVinesD, 2000, “The World Bank and poverty reduction: Past, present and future”, in The World Bank: Structure and Policies Eds GilbertCVinesD (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge) pp 87–106
45.
KappagodaN, 1995The Multilateral Development Banks: The Asian Development Bank (Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO)
46.
KapurDLewisJWebbR, 1997The World Bank: Its First Half Century (Brookings Institution, Washington, DC)
47.
KhagramS, 2004Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water and Power (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY)
48.
KooyMBakkerK, 2008, “Technologies of government: Constituting subjectivities, spaces, and infrastructures in colonial and contemporary Jakarta”International Journal of Urban and Regional Research32375–391
49.
KothariU, 2006, “Spatial practices and imaginaries: Experiences of colonial officers and development professionals”Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography27235–253
50.
LeggS, 2006, “Governmentality, congestion, and calculation in colonial Delhi”Social and Cultural Geography7709–728
51.
LeggS, 2007Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi's Urban Governmentalities (Blackwell, Oxford)
52.
LeggS, 2008, “Ambivalent improvements: Biography, biopolitics, and colonial Delhi”Environment and Planning A4037–56
53.
LeggSMcFarlaneC, 2008, “Ordinary urban spaces: Between postcolonialism and development”Environment and Planning A406–14
54.
LeitnerHPeckJSheppardE S (Eds), 2007Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers (Guilford Press, New York)
55.
LiT, 1999, “Compromising power: Development, culture, and rule in Indonesia”Cultural Anthropology14295–322
56.
LiT, 2007The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development and the Practice of Politics (Duke University Press, Durham, NC)
57.
McFarlaneC, 2008a, “Governing the contaminated city: Infrastructure and sanitation in colonial and post-colonial Bombay”International Journal of Urban and Regional Research32415–435
58.
McFarlaneC, 2008b, “Urban shadows: Materiality, the ‘Southern city’ and urban theory”Geography Compass2340–358
59.
McFarlaneCRutherfordJ, 2008, “Political infrastructures: Governing and experiencing the fabric of the city”International Journal of Urban and Regional Research32363–374
60.
McMichaelP, 2005, “Global development and the corporate food regime”, in New Directions in the Sociology of Global Development Eds ButtelF HMcMichaelP (Emerald, Bingley, Yorks) pp 265–299
61.
MamdaniM, 1996Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ)
62.
MasonEAsherR, 1973The World Bank since Bretton Woods (Brookings Institution, Washington, DC)
63.
MelosiM, 2000a, “Pure and plentiful: The development of modern waterworks in the United States”Water Policy2243–265
64.
MelosiM, 2000bThe Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, MD)
65.
MorseB, 1992Sardar Sarovar: Report of the Independent ReviewResource Futures International, Ottawa
66.
MurphyK MShleiferAVishnyR W, 1989, “Industrialization and the big push”Journal of Political Economy971003–1026
67.
MyersG, 2006, “The unauthorized city: Late colonial Lusaka and postcolonial geography”Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography27289–309
68.
O'KaneDHepnerT, 2009Biopolitics Militarism and Development: Eritrea in the 21st Century (Berghahn Books, Oxford)
69.
PeprahI, 1994The African Development Bank: Taking Stock and Preparing for the 21st Century (Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO)
70.
PierreJ (Ed.), 2000Debating Governance (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
71.
PierreJPetersB, 2000Governance, Politics and the State (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, Hants)
72.
PitmanG K, 2002Bridging Troubled Waters: Assessing the World Bank Water Resources Strategy (World Bank, Washington, DC)
73.
PowerMMohanGMercerC, 2006, “Post colonial geographies of development: Introduction”Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography27231–234
74.
RhodesR, 1996, “The new governance: Governing without government”Political Studies44652–667
75.
RichB, 1994Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment and the Crisis of Development (Earthscan, London)
76.
RobbinsP, 2003, “Transnational corporations and the discourse of water privatization”Journal of International Development151073–1082
77.
RobinsonJ, 2002, “Global and world cities: A view from off the map”International Journal of Urban and Regional Research26531–554
78.
RobinsonJ, 2003, “Postcolonialising geography: Tactics and pitfalls”Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography24273–289
79.
RobinsonJ, 2006Ordinary Cities: Between Modernity and Development (Routledge, London)
80.
RoyA, 2005, “Urban informality: Toward an epistemology of planning”Journal of the American Planning Association71147–158
81.
SauríDdel MoralL, 2001, “Recent developments in Spanish water policy: Alternatives and conflicts at the end of the hydraulic era”Geoforum32351–362
82.
ScheumannWNeubertSKippingM, 2008Water Politics and Development Cooperation: Local Power Plays and Global Governance (Springer, Berlin)
ScottJ, 1985Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale University Press, Hartford, CT)
85.
ScottJ, 1992Domination and the Arts of Resistance (Yale University Press, Hartford, CT)
86.
SimonD, 2006, “Separated by common ground? Bringing (post)development and (post)colonialism together”The Geographical Journal17210–21
87.
SpillerPSavedoffW, 1999, “Government opportunism and the provision of water”, Spilled Water: Institutional Commitment in the Provision of Water Services, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC
88.
StaplesA, 2006The Birth of Development: How the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Health Organization Changed the World, 1945–1965 (Kent University Press, Kent, OH)
89.
StolerA, 1995Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault's History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Duke University Press, Durham, NC)
90.
SwyngedouwE, 1996, “The city as a hybrid: On nature, society and cyborg urbanisation”Capitalism, Nature, Socialism765–80
91.
SwyngedouwE, 1999, “Modernity and hybridity: Nature, regeneracionismo, and the production of the Spanish waterscape, 1890–1930”Annals of the Association of American Geographers89443–465
92.
SwyngedouwE, 2004Social Power and the Urbanization of Water: Flows of Power (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
93.
SwyngedouwE, 2005, “Dispossessing H2O: The contested terrain of water privatization”Capitalism, Nature, Socialism1681–98
94.
SwyngedouwE, 2006a, “Technonatural revolutions—the scalar politics of Franco's hydro-social dream for Spain, 1939–1975”Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, New Series329–28
95.
SwyngedouwE, 2006b, “Metabolic urbanization: The making of cyborg cities”, in In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism Eds HynanNKaikaMSwyngedouwE (Routledge, London) pp 21–40
96.
SylvesterC, 2006, “Bare life as a development/postcolonial problematic”Geographical Journal17266–77
97.
TaylorC, 2004Modern Social Imaginaries (Duke University Press, Durham, NC)
98.
TussieD, 1995The Inter-American Development Bank (Lynne Rienner, Boulder, CO)
99.
UNDP, 2006, “Human development report 2006: Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty, and the global water crisis”, United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report Office, New York
100.
UNWWAP, 2003, “Water for people, water for life”, United Nations World Water Assessment Programme, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Rome
101.
UNWWAP, 2006, “Water: A shared responsibility”, United Nations World Water Assessment Programme, Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, Rome
102.
WattsM, 2003, “Development and governmentality”Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography246–34
103.
WeintraubJ, 1997, “The theory and politics of the public/private distinction”, in Public and Private in Thought and Practice: Perspectives on a Grand Dichotomy Eds WeintraubJKumarK (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL) pp 1–42
104.
World Bank, Washington, DC
105.
1989OED Annual Review of Evaluation ResultsOperations Evaluation Department
106.
1992a, “Effective implementation: Key to development impact”Report of the Portfolio Management Task Force
107.
1992bWater Supply and Sanitation Projects: The Bank's Experience 1967–1989Operations Evaluation Department
108.
1993Water Resources Management: Policy Paper (Operational Policy 4.07)
109.
1994World Development Report 1994: Infrastructure for Development (Oxford University Press, New York)
110.
World Bank/IDA, 1971Annual Report (World Bank and International Development Association, Washington, DC)
111.
WorsterD, 1985Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (Oxford University Press, Oxford)
112.
YoungR C, 2001Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Blackwell, Oxford)
