Making rivers governable: Ecological monitoring, power and scale. (April 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Tadaki, Marc; Brierley, Gary; Fuller, Ian C.; Tadaki, Marc; Fuller, Ian
• Is Part Of: New Zealand geographer. Volume 70:Number 1(2014:Apr.)
• Page Start: 7
• Page End: 21
• Publication Date: 2014-04
• Subjects: Geography -- Periodicals; New Zealand -- Description and travel -- Periodicals; 910
• DOI: 10.1111/nzg.12036
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0028-8144

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>The recently proposed centralisation of freshwater monitoring networks reveals how <italic>rivers themselves</italic> are being disciplined by the nature of the national monitoring apparatus. Freshwater monitoring is being reimagined and re‐practiced through new rationalities relating to international economic branding and particular national methodological capabilities built around reductionist monitoring frameworks. While a reductionist scaling may serve certain important (and powerful) disciplinary and discursive interests, we argue that the biophysical basis for reductionist scaling is flawed and that a national monitoring framework should work to enable place‐based understandings of river systems, which might be related to the national scale in more biophysically meaningful, institutionally innovative and democratic ways.</p> </abstract>