Report on Influence ofconflict, gender, and classrelations on availability ofwater in the household

This review essay lays out the conceptual and historical groundwork for the primary research that the WATERSPOUTT social science team will carry out through the project period over four research sites in Ethiopia, Malawi, South Africa and Uganda. We have described it as a report synthesising secondary data on conflict, gender, and class relations in the four case study areas. However, it is emphatically not intended as an exhaustive description of the specificities of the four research sites – the sections that follow will traverse quite unevenly across these regions. The essay will instead offer an overarching reading of how these research sites are situated within wider structures and relationships of power. It will engage the recurrent themes and key debates that have dominated the relevant literatures in the fields of social theory and historical and social studies in order to build a broad foundation of understanding for the empirical research that is to come.