Modelling as intervention technology: Science, politics, and water conflicts
In water conflicts, models and their creators are often seen as guides that help public and policy actors make sense of controversies and formulate responses. In such contexts, it is tempting for both modellers and decision-makers to adopt the narrative that models are neutral and that, by extensi...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Water Alternatives Association
2025-06-01
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| Series: | Water Alternatives |
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| Online Access: | https://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/alldoc/articles/vol18/v18issue2/785-a18-2-10/file |
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| Summary: | In water conflicts, models and their creators are often seen as guides that help public and policy actors
make sense of controversies and formulate responses. In such contexts, it is tempting for both modellers and
decision-makers to adopt the narrative that models are neutral and that, by extension, they present objective
insights. This assumption, however, overlooks two critical issues. First, many choices made by modellers, which
significantly shape a model’s outcome, are subjective and context-dependent. Second, water conflicts are
inherently sociopolitical processes, and models themselves actively shape how these conflicts unfold. This paper
argues that within hydropolitical dynamics, water models become the 'focal points' of a convergence of scientific
expertise, political priorities and societal values and expectations. They become 'intervention technologies' that
actively shape the very water realities they seek to describe. Drawing on ethnographic research and on insights
from Science and Technology Studies, this paper explores this argument through the case of a water transfer
controversy in the Zayandeh-Rood River Basin in central Iran. By unpacking how modelling (and countermodelling)
practices are entangled with broader sociopolitical dynamics, the paper traces how models intervene in the making
of the common resource, common sense and common good, while themselves being in turn shaped by these
contested arenas.
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| ISSN: | 1965-0175 |