Addressing water scarcity in developing country contexts: a socio-cultural approach

Abstract Current conceptualizations of and approaches to scarcity tend to be economic-focused and institution driven with understated and underemphasized sociocultural dimensions. We address this lack in a socio-cultural orientation to natural resource scarcity and draw upon Vygotsky’s theorizations to do so. We rely on the existing literature and secondary sources of information to overview issues relating to water scarcity and the survival related challenges especially in developing country contexts with a specific focus on India. Although Vygotsky theorizes individual learning and development in terms of influences from more knowledgeable individuals to the less knowledgeable, he does not engage so much with how individual learning and development is tied to community interests and community development. We extend Vygotsky by incorporating a responsibilization dimension in theorizations of individual development. Neither does Vygotsky consider how a range of communication modes including traditional or non-traditional media and technology can play an enabling role in reinforcing processes of influence. We include these to further extend Vygotsky. We consider the role of elite individuals such as community leaders and others well-recognized for their socio-cultural status or specialized skills in disseminating knowledge in Vygotsky’s zones of proximal development. We emphasize the circulation of knowledge via sociocultural interactions as pertinent to raising consciousness of natural resource scarcity. We finally discuss initiatives to manage water scarcity at consumer, community and industry-consumer partnership levels. The paper broadens current understandings of scarcity and extends Vygotsky’s sociocultural theorizations in the focus on communities, the responsibilization of consumers as well as in the usage of communication modes, and suggests independent and supported consumer-driven and consumer-centered initiatives as complementary to the existing in seeking solutions to water-scarcity in developing country contexts.