Caitlyn Dye

CAITLYN K. DYE, then a graduate student at University of Illinois, Chicago, Illinois, was granted funding in October 2018 to aid research on “New Urban Climate:Water, Security and the State on Cochabamba’s Urban Fringe,” supervised by Dr. Molly Doane. Over the course of fieldwork, the grantee found that local communities across a rural-urban nexus seek to access state care while retaining community control over water resources. As state-led efforts to achieve water “security” in a context of climate change and environmental vulnerability rely on large supply-side infrastructure projects, rural and urban communities alike seek to balance competing interests by blending existing private community-based water systems with political claims to water from state projects. While climate change presents novel challenges, state and community-led water management practices alike reflect long-running traditions of water provisioning as simultaneously a vehicle for state formation and assertions of community autonomy.