Deconstructing discourses of drought

Graham Haughton's article brings a regulation theory-inspired approach to bear upon the most high-profile event in the English and Welsh water industry since its privatization in 1989 - the Yorkshire drought of 1995-96. At the heart of his paper is an analysis of the discursive construction, primarily by the media, of the crisis narratives underlying the heated public debate over the drought. Such an analysis is central to an understanding of both the management of the drought and subsequent responses to it. Haughton's article also raises important points for those interested in the interrelationship between different levels of government and scales of governance, and the ecological dimension of socio-economic restructuring. Moreover, my reading of his article raised questions regarding characterizations of the UK's privatization programme; the role of the concepts of crisis and nature in analyses of socio-economic restructuring; and the uses of discourse theory and discourse analysis. In what follows, each of these questions is addressed in turn.