2026/06/23 by Pearl Puwurayire, Nina Gribat · 1 voice
Environmental Science · Nursing · Social Sciences · #Child Nutrition and Water Access #Wastewater Treatment and Reuse #Water Governance and Infrastructure
paper · doi:10.1080/17535069.2026.2685323
openalex publication_date 2026/06/23 · openalex created_date 2026/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/24
Water delivery in the Global South is characterised by the intertwining and co-existence of diverse practices and materialities, which are commonly associated with ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ urbanism in academic debates. This includes piped networks, individual or communal boreholes, wells, water tanks, buckets, water trucks, and other kinds of material infrastructure, as well as different groups of actors involved in providing and consuming water. We argue that conceptualising water delivery as ‘hybrid’ allows us to focus on the particular, situated socio-material configurations of water delivery and their particular social implications. Drawing on dwelling and building perspective, our study employs semi-structured interviews with water delivery experts and households, and observations, in a low- and high-income neighbourhood in Sunyani, Ghana, to understand the different rationalities underpinning hybrid water delivery and their contributions to social inequalities.