New Books Network Christiane Tristl, "Turning Water into Commodity: Digital Innovation and the Private Sector as Development Agent" (Bristol UP, 2025)
Mar 8, 2026
Christiane Tristl, an economic geographer studying digital tech and the marketisation of water. She traces how private-sector digital systems reshape water access in Kenya. Short scenes cover fieldwork hurdles, how alien technologies exclude local repair, and how dashboards hide lived realities. The conversation ends with a turn toward applied work on sustainable agriculture and alternative economic models.
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Follow The Thing To Reveal Hidden Networks
- Tracing a single object reveals hidden political and infrastructural relations shaping development projects.
- Christiane Tristl followed the Pago dispenser from Denmark to Kenya to escape preset theory and reveal understudied social-technical connections.
Inclusion Can Mean Becoming A Paying Customer
- Inclusion via marketized water often meant residents became paying customers while local vendors preserved income by capturing access.
- Nairobi Water gained traceable revenue and data for investors, but users' prices and access mostly stayed the same.
Stubborn Contact Opened Company Doors
- Gaining company access required persistent networking and mutual exchange, not just cold outreach.
- Tristl eventually connected with the lead engineer in Denmark who treated her as an on-the-ground anthropologist and exchanged field insights for access.
