Thinking with salmon about rain tanks: commons as intra-actions

The construction of California's large waterworks was inextricably entangled with a discourse of progress through technoscientific control over unruly rivers. In recent years, a turn towards decentralised governance and diversified infrastructure has produced alternate discourses of human–ecological collaboration and water as a commons. I investigate how water is understood by residents along Salmon Creek (Sonoma Co., CA) engaged in efforts to increase streamflow and restore salmon runs. Drawing on Barad's theory of agential realism, I find that living with springs and rainwater harvesting cisterns enacts intra-actions that increase residents' sense of interdependence with other human and nonhuman watershed residents. I argue that commons frameworks represent a coherent alternative to state and market frameworks of water governance.