Turning Water into a Commodity takes the reader to multiple fieldwork sites in Kenya, including a town Tristl calls Kondo, and to a major pump manufacturer in Europe called “Pumpinski.” These and other pseudonyms pepper the text and anchor Tristl’s emphasis on the processes take shape around, and through, new technologies. If the reader wants to identify the company it doesn’t take much since, while its name is changed, the titles of company reports give things away. I mention this not as critique, but because it is important to note that, as much as the book’s argument is about processes, those processes operate in particular places and with particular actors. When process and place come together this book raises provocative questions. Among them: are donkeys infrastructure?
Tristl, C. (2025). Turning water into a commodity: digital innovation and the private sector as development agent. Bristol University Press. ISBN: 9781529245479 (hardcover), 9781529245486 (ebook). From £27.99 GBP. (URL: https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/turning-water-into-a-commodity)
Review by Jeremy Schmidt, Department of Geography and Environmental Science, Queen Mary University of London, UK
