Unpacking 'community water management' in rural Chile: An institutional ethnography (original) (raw)
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PhD Thesis, 2020
This thesis explores the organisation of rural water delivery in Chile. Specifically, it examines the Chilean government's Ministry of Public Works programme, Agua Potable Rural (APR), through the experiences of rural people's negotiated access to drinking water, their becoming members of an APR organisation, and, ultimately how their access to drinking water is institutionally mediated. As such, this dissertation is an inquiry into the organisation of community water management in rural Chile and its relation to the wider neoliberal context of water management in the country.
The Public and Private Domain of the Everyday Politics of Water
This essay presents a detailed ethnographic account of the struggles of two Peruvian women to gain access and control over water and land after having separated from their husbands. From these accounts, it becomes clear that strategies for feminist action cannot and should not solely be aimed at formal laws and policies. Important water powers also reside in day-to-day water management and control practices that are embedded in culture and partly manifested in customary norms and laws, and that occur in social domains that are not normally associated with water management such as the household. The authors argue that identifying and understanding such nonformal water powers provides an important additional entry-point for devising feminist water strategies. It helps to see day-to-day 'bottle-necks' that hinder more gender equity in access to and control of water and land, and that stand in the way of a more equitable and democratic water management. At the same time, a focus on everyday water politics can also reveal important sources of agency for women, resources that they can mobilize in support of their attempts to access and control land and water. ---GENDER AND WATER: TRACING THE CONNECTIONS Water constitutes one important area of feminist struggle: access and control over water and (irrigated) land are central in the livelihoods of rural households, and key to determining one's bargaining power in different social RFJP260654 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 ---------------------J u a n a V e r a D e l g a d o a n d M a r g r e e t Z w a r t e v e e n /Water power in the Andes 3 95 100 105 110 115 120 125
Geoforum, 2018
Water conflicts are increasingly spilling into the streets in Chile, as communities struggle to make their voices heard in formal decision-making forums. However, these growing social movements are doing much more than just marching. Combining insights from political ecology and legal geography, this article approaches water governance as a complex field of struggle in which social movement resistance plays a crucial role. In the case of the Alto Maipo hydropower conflict in central Chile, social movement actors have taken on a wide range of roles that they feel should correspond to the state: monitoring the hydropower company, documenting citizen concerns, and demanding accountability from government agencies. Attention to the legal dimensions of this struggle reveals how this work of "subsidizing the state" was built into the new institutional order ushered in during the Pinochet dictatorship, and how the capacity of social movement actors to mold this space to their advantage has been restricted by the legal framework for water governance. While there has been considerable attention to the role of resistance from water user associations in reshaping neoliberal water reforms in other parts of Latin America, the Chilean case highlights the need to also consider social movement actors from outside of the conventional water sector who struggle to defend in-stream uses not recognized under the law. Faced with limited legal recourse in the courts and little legitimacy in decision-making forums, Chilean activists have pursued alternative strategies that have expanded the scope of their resistance and built broader political pressure for change.
International Feminist Journal of Politics, 2007
This essay presents a detailed ethnographic account of the struggles of two Peruvian women to gain access and control over water and land after having separated from their husbands. From these accounts, it becomes clear that strategies for feminist action cannot and should not solely be aimed at formal laws and policies. Important water powers also reside in day-to-day water management and control practices that are embedded in culture and partly manifested in customary norms and laws, and that occur in social domains that are not normally associated with water management such as the household. The authors argue that identifying and understanding such nonformal water powers provides an important additional entry-point for devising feminist water strategies. It helps to see day-to-day 'bottle-necks' that hinder more gender equity in access to and control of water and land, and that stand in the way of a more equitable and democratic water management. At the same time, a focus on everyday water politics can also reveal important sources of agency for women, resources that they can mobilize in support of their attempts to access and control land and water. ---GENDER AND WATER: TRACING THE CONNECTIONS Water constitutes one important area of feminist struggle: access and control over water and (irrigated) land are central in the livelihoods of rural households, and key to determining one's bargaining power in different social RFJP260654 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 ---------------------J u a n a V e r a D e l g a d o a n d M a r g r e e t Z w a r t e v e e n /Water power in the Andes 3 95 100 105 110 115 120 125
Geoforum, 2015
Based on insights from peasant and indigenous communities' struggles for water in Andean Peru and Ecuador, in this article we argue that the defense of grassroots interests-and with it the advancement of more equitable governance-greatly hinges on the capacity of these groups to engage in grassroots scalar politics. With increasing pressure on water resources in the Andes, the access to water of many rural peasant and indigenous communities is being threatened. The growing realization that their access to water and related interests are embedded in broader regional and national politics, legal frameworks and water policies, has led many communities and peasant water user associations to engage in networks and create alliances with other water users, governmental institutions and non-governmental actors. To better understand these (and other) grassroots struggles and strategies, in this contribution we develop the concept of grassroots scalar politics, which we use as a lens to analyze two case studies. In Ecuador we present how water users of the province of Chimborazo have defended their interests through the consolidation of the Provincial Water Users Associations' Federation Interjuntas-Chimborazo and its networks. Then we focus on how with the support of Interjuntas-Chimborazo the Water Users Association of the Chambo irrigation system defended their historical water allocation. In Peru we analyze the conformation and achievements of the federative Water Users Association of Ayacucho (JUDRA) and present how the community of Ccharhuancho in the region of Huancavelica, managed to defend its waters and territory against the coastal irrigation sector of Ica.
WATER AS A MOBILIZER FOR ALTERNATIVE GOVERNANCES. INSTITUTIONAL CHALLENGES OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE AND THE WATER CRISIS IN CHILE (Atena Editora), 2023
El presente artículo tiene por objetivo reflexionar sobre las condiciones políticas, sociales, climáticas e institucionales existentes para trazar los desafíos institucionales que se requieren abordar para hacer frente a la crisis hídrica, pensando en la tensión por el agua como un movilizador para la propuesta, discusión y logro de gobernanzas alternativas, que den respuesta a la diversidad de escenarios climáticos, sociales y culturales existentes en Chile. La escasez y la crisis hídrica instalada en la diversidad del territorio, han puesto en tensión en los últimos años a un sistema hídrico-político altamente centralizado, mercantilizado y deslegitimado. El trabajo se articula desde una reflexión desde el sistema político al funcionamiento de las instituciones, buscando visibilizar que esta problemática requiere un tratamiento multinivel y transdisciplinar, ante la inminente realidad del racionamiento domiciliario en zonas ampliamente pobladas y el cambio constitucional, más allá del plebiscito destinado para dirimir la propuesta.
Assembling commons and commodities: The peruvian water law between ideology and materialisation
Water Alternatives , 2019
The Peruvian water resources law of 2009 (Ley de Recursos Hídricos 29338) gathers contrasting – even divergent – intentions and interests; it discursively projects water to be a national common good and an economic good. The ideas behind the law connect to global currents that promote the marketisation of water rights and commodification of water services. This paper will use a historical account of water legislation in Peru as well as detailed ethnographic attention to the implementation of the water law and its infrastructure of governance in the city of Arequipa and the Quilca-Chili river basin to analyse how the law functions as an interplay between its official text and the ways state officials use it in specific encounters with users and stakeholders. Such encounters vary and have different outcomes, at times presenting openings for groups of actors to gain influence, and at other times excluding participation. A clear-cut analytical common/commodity dichotomy is of little use when trying to understand the dynamics of governance around water in present-day Arequipa and Peru. This paper suggests 'assembling' as analytic to grasp how public and private, marketised and commodified interests come together in the implementation of the law of water resources.
Water, 2021
Chile’s neoliberal central water management gives shape to a series of conflicts arising from diverse understandings and ways of life linked to water. This article addresses the question of who is responsible for the ecological costs regarding water use of mining activity in the north of Chile. From the perspective of hydro-social territories, we analyze how the local population in Tarapacá is acting on unequal footing regarding environmental information and knowledge. Local and practical experiences are devalued against technical and scientific modeling, supported by legal and political definitions of “the environment” and “water”. Focusing on diverse local narratives, we show how the local population feels threatened by the environmental impacts of mining activity but struggles to find legitimate ways of articulating those anxieties to gain a sense of agency. We conclude that the local ecological consequences of extractivism in this region can only be understood in the context of ...
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The way that water is entangled with broader social relations has become a prominent concern in political ecology, geography and beyond. Employing the concept of the hydro-social cycle highlights how water is produced by, and simultaneously constitutes, social and power relations. Applying and expanding the hydro-social cycle as an analytical lens, this paper explores the contestation of different discourses of water. Looking at the conflict over the construction of a proposed dam in Chile, we examine different meanings given to water to understand how these produce uneven power relations with material and symbolic implications. By teasing out the workings and contestations of this conflict as a hydro-social cycle, we aim to highlight the diverse range of elements enlisted in it beyond water, to expose its complexity and to search for more just and inclusive alternatives.
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The challenges of water governance in Chile today lie at the confluence of growing water demands, increasing climatic variability, and mounting discontent with neoliberal water policy. These these dynamics coalesce in the Maipo, Chile’s most densely populated river basin and seat of the capital city, Santiago. The Maipo River sustains the growing capital city of Santiago, booming agricultural production in the Santiago valley, and hydroelectric generation from the river’s swift descent from the Andes. Now, with the population of Santiago exceeding 5 million, a seventh year of drought racking central Chile, and controversial hydropower development sparking mass protests, the stakes of water governance in this critical river basin are higher than ever. Based on in-depth empirical research in the Maipo River basin, this thesis explores how processes of environmental and social change interact with Chile’s internationally famous water laws to shape water governance, understood as the se...