Traveling Moralities: Obligations, Materiality and Water in Ceará, Northeast Brazil

Water is the resource that evokes fluidity, movement and circulation par excellence. With all of its intrinsic resemblance to movement it is perplexing that liberal forms of obligation that derive from the law have not been able to incorporate fluidity and circulation. This observation is not an academic insight, rather, it is the justification that the leader of the Congressional team committed to create a "Water Pact" in the State of Ceará, Northeast Brazil, gave me while explaining the reasons behind the project he was tackling. The State Congress had realized that the law was too static of an instrument and decided to launch the Water Pact, a fluid and circulating political mechanism for creating the type of moral obligations that pact leaders thought necessary for sustainable water management. These obligations went beyond the law and involved people's innermost affects and commitments. This is a proposal to study the role of mobility and materiality in the creation of the Water Pact and explore the meaning of moral obligations when they are created through fluid and circulating mechanisms.