Deconstructing discourses of drought

Graham Haughton's article brings a regulation theory-inspired approach to b ear upon the most high-profile event in the English and Welsh water industr y since its privatization in 1989 - the Yorkshire drought of 1995-96. At th e heart of his paper is an analysis of the discursive construction, primari ly by the media, of the crisis narratives underlying the heated public deba te over the drought. Such an analysis is central to an understanding of bot h the management of the drought and subsequent responses to it. Haughton's article also raises important points for those interested in the interrelat ionship between different levels of government and scales of governance, an d the ecological dimension of socio-economic restructuring. Moreover, my re ading of his article raised questions regarding characterizations of the UK 's privatization programme; the role of the concepts of crisis and nature i n analyses of socio-economic restructuring; and the uses of discourse theor y and discourse analysis. In what follows, each of these questions is addre ssed in turn.