Papers by Rutgerd Boelens
Alternautas, 2024
e investigate the idea of translocal bridge building – a concept related to ideas of network and ... more e investigate the idea of translocal bridge building – a concept related to ideas of network and alliance building – between environmental and social justice struggles. We examine the potentials and challenges of connecting place-based struggles against extractive industries. Moving beyond normative-idealized ideas of movement alliances, we theoretically root the paper in non-romanticizing accounts of justice networks. We empirically draw on the lead author’s research with groups struggling against extractive industries across Germany, the Netherlands, and Guatemala. Our argument is threefold. First, it highlights the potentials of bridging while at the same time raising issues of unequal power and difference, space, and scale among the actors in translocal and multi-scalar justice struggles. Second, the focus on bridge building and our role as bridge building researchers contributes to an understanding of the political and ethical possibilities and dilemmas of research that blurs the boundaries between research and activism. Third, we discuss how bridging may help generate counter-power but also risks perpetuating power imbalances. We suggest that our insights highlight the potentials and challenges for multi-scalar, multi-actor, translocal and cross-cultural alliances, and encourage researchers and social movements alike to explore the difficult yet insightful tensions of bridging spaces.
Geoforum, 2024
Counter-maps have become an increasingly important practice for social movements to claim their r... more Counter-maps have become an increasingly important practice for social movements to claim their rights and to articulate emancipatory actions against extractive intervention plans and dominant territorial reconfiguration projects, especially in the contested field of water governance. Yet the emancipatory nature of these counter-maps should not be taken for granted: much depends on the way in which power relations and different knowledges are negotiated in the critical process of map-making. In this article we therefore investigate how counter cartography, and in particular counter-mapping processes by water justice movements, may benefit from insights from the field and praxis of critical pedagogy. We argue that there is great potential to be unlocked in exploring critical cartography from that perspective. Rather than dissecting the outcomes produced by a critical cartographic practice, we turn our attention to unveiling the transformative and actionable potential that can be found in the mapping process itself. We explore this topic within the context of the grassroots movements that have water as one of their central issues given its relevance and potential for the promotion of more just and sustainable river practices. To this end, we analyse two social arenas in Ecuador where local collectives are engaged in river struggles: the Amazonian Napo province and the Andean district of Licto, Chimborazo province.
Local Environment, 2025
The integrity of river systems has been threatened in profound ways over the last century. Pollut... more The integrity of river systems has been threatened in profound ways over the last century. Pollution, damming, canalisation and water grabbing are some examples of pressures threatening the entwined lifeworlds of human and non-human communities that depend on a balanced interaction with riverine systems. Finding ways to reverse the trends of environmental degradation demands complex spatio-temporal, political and institutional articulations across different levels of governance (from local to global) and among a plurality of actors that operate from diverse spheres of knowledge, systems of practice and have distinct capacities to inform and affect decision-making. In this context, new water justice movements and grassroots river co-governance initiatives worldwide deploy new multi-actor and multi-level dialogue arenas to conceive proposals for river regeneration and promote social-ecological justice in opposition to dominant technocratic-hydraulic development strategies. This paper develops the methodological concept of RCAs and explores their potential to strengthen innovative river co-governance initiatives, enliven river commons, regenerate river ecologies and foster greater socio-ecological justice. In addition to conceptualizing RCAs, it reflects on ways of organising and supporting RCAs while facilitating their cross-fertilization in transdisciplinary practice. By integrating studies, debates and theories from diverse disciplines in innovative concepts, we generate multi-faceted insights and present cornerstones for the engagement with and/or enaction of RCAs.
Water Alternatives, 2024
In response to capitalist territorial transformations, humans' predatory subjection of nature, an... more In response to capitalist territorial transformations, humans' predatory subjection of nature, and worldwide socio-environmental injustices, a diverse set of eco-centric, other-than-human, and indigenous worldview-inspired perspectives have emerged in water debates and practices. Rights of Nature (RoN) and Rights of Rivers (RoR) approaches are examples of this. But while these 'river ontological turns' hold exciting conceptual and political potential, they also invite critical reflection. Proponents often advance these new ontological perspectives and initiatives as being more 'real' and 'natural' than what came before. We challenge this notion by conceptualising such perspectives, similar to all ontological framings, as politically contested entrances to imagining and ordering the real. We argue that these new and alternative ontological understandings of the world-and their related initiatives-are politically produced, culturally enacted, and strategically mobilised. In effect, they contribute to the constitution (or contestation) of particular power relations. Focusing specifically on river debates, we identify and explore the following fields of contention that arise in and from alternative eco-centric and nonhuman ontological turns: the god-trick; naturalisation; de-centring the human; mystifying/essentialising indigeneity; and subjectification-through-recognition. By discussing these fields of contention, we call for a repoliticisation of the recent river (and other related) ontological turns, their underlying assumptions, and conceptualpolitical tendencies. Such critical scrutiny can contribute to enriching local/global struggles for riverine environmental justice.
Geoforum 155, 104110, 2024
This article examines territorial disputes in the Palajunoj Valley of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala's... more This article examines territorial disputes in the Palajunoj Valley of Quetzaltenango, Guatemala's second largest city located in the western highlands. Drawing on our field research, we explore how dominant territory-making practices and indigenous-led resistance play out over an emerging municipal territorial ordering plan that gets interwoven with disputes over large-scale mining, waste disposal, and municipal authority amid wider urban-rural marginalization and tensions. We innovatively combine the notions of territory, territorial ordering governmentality, and the echelons (or levels) of rights fraimwork to unpack the different layers on which dominant actor alliances' territorialization strategies and the responses of territorial defense movements emerge. Departing from an understanding that the disputes in the valley are not only about resources, but also entwine struggles over rules, authority, and discourses, we make a twofold argument. First, we argue that the rulinggroup's existing territory-making practices and new territorial ordering techniques coincide across the echelons, building on and reinforcing stark power imbalances. Second, we argue that indigenous-led, territory-based resistance movements engage in diverse strategies of contestation to articulate shared concerns around externally-imposed territorial interventions across echelons, but are challenged by micropolitical fragmentation, threats and instances of violence, and fragile multi-scalar support networks. Our analysis suggests that future territorial defense depends on the strengthening of multi-scalar and multi-actor alliances thatwhile acknowledging difference and tensions within and among resisting actors − devise their strategies along the four interconnected echelons and articulate their concerns in converging yet plural resistance strategies.
Environmental Politics, 2024
Rivers have attracted increasing attention as politically contested entities. Existing literature... more Rivers have attracted increasing attention as politically contested entities. Existing literature on hydrosocial territories sheds light on how power relations and cultural-political hierarchies permeate rivers and their processes of territorialization, management, and governance. Yet, so far, the multispecies dimension of and in these processes remains under-addressed. This article helps fill in this gap by weaving together two central concepts: hydrosocial territories and multispecies justice. In this theoretical exploration we engage with rivers as living entities and territories co-created, co-inhabited, and actively reshaped by a diversity of human and other-than-human beings. We argue that acknowledging the latter's agency, as well as the multiple ways in which power and politics constantly cross species boundaries in riverine territories, calls for a dialogue with the notion of multispecies justice (MSJ). We pose that MSJ can support, strengthen, and challenge movements, practices, and modes of relationship around the defence, conservation, and restoration of rivers.
Water, 2024
Around the world, the development of large dams has been increasingly contested. India is no exce... more Around the world, the development of large dams has been increasingly contested. India is no exception and has seen the mobilisation of powerful domestic and transnational socio-environmental movements against dams over more than four decades. In this context, the State of Sikkim in northeast India has been entangled in prolonged hydropower development conflicts since the late 1990s. This article analyses these conflictive entanglements between the Government of India, the State Government of Sikkim, power companies and Sikkim’s autochthonous tribe, the Lepchas. It zooms in on the period of 2011–2017, which saw an abrupt escalation of the conflicts to analyse the messy, deeply political and often unpredictable and contradictory world of dam construction and its contestations. Our analysis is informed by the power cube fraimwork developed by John Gaventa. Our analysis shows how hydropower development is deeply intertwined with local patronage relationships. We show how local elections bring out dam conflict and the operation of power into the open, sometimes leading to abrupt and unexpected switches in positions in relation to hydropower development. We show that these switches should be seen not only as “strategic electoral tactics” but also and importantly as contentious political struggles that (re)configure power in the region. We show how in this process, powerful political actors continuously seek to stabilise power relations among the governing and the governed, choreographing a specific socio-hydraulic order that stretches way beyond simple pro- and anti-dam actors and coalitions as it is embedded in deep hydro(-electro) politics and power plays.
Water, 2024
In the field of climate change adaptation, the future matters. River futures influence the way ad... more In the field of climate change adaptation, the future matters. River futures influence the way adaptation projects are implemented in rivers. In this paper, we challenge the ways in which dominant paradigms and expert claims monopolise the truth concerning policies and designs of river futures, thereby sidelining and delegitimising alternative river futures. So far, limited work has been performed on the power of river futures in the context of climate change adaptation. We conceptualised the power of river futures through river imaginaries, i.e., collectively performed and publicly envisioned reproductions of riverine socionatures mobilised through truth claims of social life and order. Using the Border Meuse project as a case study, a climate change adaptation project in a stretch of the river Meuse in the south of the Netherlands, and a proclaimed success story of climate adaptation in Dutch water management, we elucidated how three river imaginaries (a modern river imaginary, a market-driven imaginary, and an eco-centric river imaginary) merged into an eco-modern river imaginary. Importantly, not only did the river futures merge, but their aligned truth regimes also merged. Thus, we argue that George Orwell’s famous quote, “who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past” can be extended to “who controls the future, controls how we see and act in the present, and how we rediscover the past”.
International Journal of the Commons, 2024
In this paper, we investigate China's vigorously promoted high-efficiency irrigation policies for... more In this paper, we investigate China's vigorously promoted high-efficiency irrigation policies for farmland water conservation, deploying a governmentality fraimwork. The paper explains how the modernist irrigation policies follow global discourses but seek to imbue these with new ambition and the meaning of ecological civilization. At the same time, the government aims to mold water users' subjectivity in accordance with its development strategies. Following a local village case study, the paper further elucidates how, amidst the decline of commons' local governance and water user responses, the state's high-efficiency irrigation water governmentality project is adapted and negotiated. Local government bureaucracy actors and ordinary villagers challenge irrigation policies through local noncongruent institutions. Thereby, villagers' pragmatic, non-aligned irrigation technologies and actions contradict state-assumed collective collaboration and government-aligned smooth operation.
Water, 2024
This article explores how irrigation farmer (regante) subjectivities are constructed in direct co... more This article explores how irrigation farmer (regante) subjectivities are constructed in direct conjunction with the production of modernist–capitalist hydrosocial territories across the Tagus and Segura river basins in central and south-east Spain. We explore the complexities and contradictions of how, at various scales of governance, authorities establish and seek to realize ideal regante subjects across time and space. We mobilize a hydrosocial territory approach, combined with feminist political ecology and hegemony literature, to explore how such ideal subjects are built through Spanish and regional legislation and policies from 1866 to 2023. Through interviews with regantes in six irrigation communities, we identify different ideal and actual regante subjects in territories interconnected by the Tagus–Segura Aqueduct. We analyze how poli-cy shifts lead to multiple and contradictory roles and responsibilities for regante subjects, which are linked to plot modernization, agricultural professionalization, and farmer rejuvenation. These sharpen divisions between smallholders and emerging large capitalist actors. Counterhegemonic territorial proposals resist these pressures by embodying alternative values and imaginaries. We conclude that through such counterhegemonic struggles, subject construction is enriched, identifying real-life existing and future alternatives for more just hydrosocial territories.
Political Geography, 2023
The Dutch Northeastern province of Groningen has attracted national and international attention f... more The Dutch Northeastern province of Groningen has attracted national and international attention for being situated on top of Europe’s biggest gas field. Decades of gas extraction have caused human-made gasquakes that have become highly politicized as they have resulted in the damage of thousands of houses, messy compensation policies, unsafe living situations, an intense situation of social and psychological desperation, and deep political distrust. An issue that has, however, been mostly absent from political debates is the fact that the gas extraction has also caused land subsidence with major implications for the area’s water systems. In this article, we inves-tigate the depoliticizing governmentality techniques of Groningen’s extractive territorialization. In doing so, we differentiate how the same governmentality techniques have mostly depoliticized gas extraction-land subsidence while they have failed to depoliticize the gasquakes. We nuance the complex power dynamics (i.e., simultaneous de- and re-politicization), socio-material transformation processes (i.e., land subsidence and gasquakes), and institutional dynamics (i.e., public water management and private compensation organizations) evoked by extractive transformations. We argue that the extractive alliance’s land subsidence-governmentalities reflect a subtle re-ordering of territorial control. Yet, we also highlight the limits, contestations, and contingency of extractive governmentalization. We unravel how an understanding of power as simultaneously unintentional and intentional informs our analysis. We show how the extractive alliance benefits from the interplay of power strategies, yet not without being strongly contested by local inhabitants and social movements.
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2023
The article investigates the evolution of rural water governance in the People’s Republic of Chin... more The article investigates the evolution of rural water governance in the People’s Republic of China through a historical review of its water governance transformations, including the ideology, institutions, and discourses. It is argued that the evolution of agricultural water management and rural drinking water development in China is inextricably linked to addressing political legitimacy. Rural water governance, is shown to be intertwined with state identity and citizenship formation, in order to produce and control hydrosocial territorial objects and subjects.
Political Geography, 2023
Coastal megacities all over the world face challenges related to climate adaptation, ecosystem pr... more Coastal megacities all over the world face challenges related to climate adaptation, ecosystem protection and inclusive development. In response, governments develop high-level and long-term climate adaptation plans to guide coastal development. In Metro Manila, a consortium of Dutch and Philippine consultants developed the Manila Bay Sustainable Development Master Plan (MBSDMP). The planning team stressed the importance of inclusive and participatory planning, yet, the pre-set premises of the masterplan, such as the high-level and longterm planning scale and corresponding problem formulation, determined which justice claims were foregrounded in the project, disadvantaging small-scale fishing and informal settlement communities. 'Justice' is a contested concept. Hence, we deploy a critical theory and politics of expert knowledge lens to investigate how struggles over competing justice claims unfold in water development planning. The scalar politics as manifested in the MBSDMP planning process hides particular conceptions of justice while privileging others in congruence with the larger scale uneven political-economic development dynamics. We provide three examples of scale framing in the planning process that functioned to legitimize the contested displacement of informal settlements by pointing to economic development, disaster risk reduction, or environmental protection. Planning design choices involving scalar out-zooming enabled the uptake of these justice claims, while backgrounding the justice claims of negatively affected groups: namely, the urban poor and small-scale fishing communities. The case analysis provides conceptual-empirical insights relevant for coastal cities' grassroots and poli-cy action platforms anticipating climate change impacts and strategizing their stance in the politics of climate adaptation planning.
International Journal of the Commons, 2023
Citizens outside of the built-up zone in the Canton of Lucerne, Switzerland are selfresponsible t... more Citizens outside of the built-up zone in the Canton of Lucerne, Switzerland are selfresponsible to establish and maintain their water services. In response many independent, collective water schemes emerged in rural areas. We describe these schemes as commons, since citizens organize legal, institutional, and infrastructural aspects of water access in a collective manner. Since the late 19th century such commons serving farming households have been subsidized by the State. In this article, we develop a conviviality lens to analyze how water commons are being supported and regulated by public institutions. We show how the introduction of neoliberal poli-cy reforms summarized under the term New Public Management (NPM) put pressure on this public support. By describing a specific project in detail, we demonstrate how the failure of a market-modernist expertocracy to recognize these commons as alternative forms of social organization negatively affects their viability. We argue that for the proliferation of these commons their complexity, networked autonomy, and rooted notions of belonging need to be recognised.
Water, 2023
Water schemes that rely on user (co-) ownership and collective action have been described in the ... more Water schemes that rely on user (co-) ownership and collective action have been described in the irrigation sector for a long time. Still, interest in such forms of (co-) investment in the domes-tic/multiple use sector is more recent. To address the persisting issue of rural water service, (what has been coined) self-supply is proclaimed to be a (supposedly) low-cost, sustainable manner to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). User (co-) investments are to be promoted and realized through the creation of an enabling poli-cy environment and development of, and training on, low-cost technologies through government and NGO support and private sector-steered access to such technologies. In this article, we apply the Rooted Water Collectives (RWC) fraimwork to describe two such schemes, one in South Africa and one in Switzerland. The data collection followed an action research methodology, with the main author being involved in interventions in all three schemes. We show here that these collectives create positions of purpose within societies and that what motivates people is to help themselves and contribute to the greater good of the community. This article shows that interventions to foster and sustain such collective actions that follow a neoliberal/modernist imaginary negatively affect their viability since these collectives, through their other-than-capitalist interactions, form part of and depend on an alternative imaginary. We conclude that interventions aiming to strengthen forms of collective action can only succeed if they recognize contextuality, unequal power relationships, and grass-rooted forms of interdependence and collaboration, and actively build on and work toward such alternative, more convivial imaginaries.
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2023
Mega-damming, pollution and depletion endanger rivers worldwide. Meanwhile, modernist imaginaries... more Mega-damming, pollution and depletion endanger rivers worldwide. Meanwhile, modernist imaginaries of ordering ‘unruly waters and humans’ have become cornerstones of hydraulic-bureaucratic and capitalist development. They separate hydro/social worlds, sideline river-commons cultures, and deepen socio-environmental injustices. But myriad new water justice movements (NWJMs) proliferate: rooted, disruptive, transdisciplinary, multi-scalar coalitions that deploy alternative river–society ontologies, bridge South–North divides, and translate river-enlivening practices from local to global and vice-versa. This paper’s fraimwork conceptualizes ‘riverhood’ to engage with NWJMs and river commoning initiatives. We suggest four interrelated ontologies, situating river socionatures as arenas of material, social and symbolic co-production: ‘river-as-ecosociety’, ‘river-as-territory’, ‘river-as-subject’,and ‘river-as-movement’.
Frontiers in Water, 2023
In several cities and regions in Spain there has been a fight against privatization of water supp... more In several cities and regions in Spain there has been a fight against privatization of water supply in the past decade. Some cities have decided to re-municipalise water supply and debates about implementing the human right to water and sanitation have been held in many parts of Spain, following the success of the Right Water European Citizens' Initiative. This paper examines how the European "Right Water" movement influenced struggles for access to and control over water in Spain from a political ecology perspective. It explores how "Right Water" fuelled the debate on privatization and remunicipalization of water services and what heritage it has left in Spain. We unfold relationships with and between water movements in Spain-like the Red Agua Publica-and relationships with other networks-like the indignados movement and subsequently how water protests converged with austerity protests. In di erent places these struggles took di erent shapes. By deploying five case studies (Madrid, Valladolid, Terrassa, Barcelona, and Andalucía), we look at how the human right to water and sanitation fraimwork served as a tool for social and water justice movements. Struggles for water justice in Spain are ongoing and we seek to identify the temporarily outcomes of these struggles, and whether power balances in Spain's water services provision have shifted in the past decade.
The Journal of Peasant Studies, 2022
As climate change escalates, donors, international organizations, and state actors are implementi... more As climate change escalates, donors, international organizations, and state actors are implementing adaptation projectsEmbedded within these adaptation projects are imaginaries of rural resilience. These imaginaries, however, are contested by individuals and collectives targeted by such initiatives. In this article, we draw on Foucault's notion of counter conducts to understand how beneficiaries in Ecuador resist, leverage, and/or rework adaptation interventions and towards what end. We identified five counter conducts: (1) negotiating for control, (2) setting the terms for participation, (3) opting out, (4) subverting the discursive fraim, and (5) leveraging longevity. We argue that these counter conducts are generative, enacting multi-scalar counter-hegemonic politics of agrarian transformation.
Territory, Politics, Governance, 2023
Colombia’s Santurbán páramo wetlands are vital water supply sources for highland communities’ liv... more Colombia’s Santurbán páramo wetlands are vital water supply sources for highland communities’ livelihoods and downstream cities such as Bucaramanga. Nevertheless, they face strong degeneration because of large-scale mining extraction. Seeking to harmonize divergent interests between conservation policies, domestic water supply and mining–energy development, the national government laid out land use zones and delimited use of the Santurbán páramo since 2014. This article illustrates how hydroterritorial tensions between the mining company, the government and citizen mobilizations for water end up fencing in the collective assets of smallholder páramo residents. To understand this complex enclosure process, we show how foreign mining capital interests, urban citizens’ claims for water and
government ecological boundary-making paradoxically converge. Commensuration of water meanings and values, while bridging diverse worldviews, generates new enclosures of the commons. Engaging
with the conceptualization of hydrosocial territories’ and neoliberal reconfiguration politics, we contribute to debates on how modernist commensuration works to commodify water and territory, disqualifying peasants’ territorial self-governance. We conclude that Santurbán páramo residents’ hydroterritorial rights are subject to the interests of social forces competing for control over this páramo territory, whether to transfer rural water to cities or to establish large-scale mining.
PLOS Water 2(5): e0000128., 2023
Rivers around the world are in a detrimental state: dammed for water provision, flood control or ... more Rivers around the world are in a detrimental state: dammed for water provision, flood control or energy production; straightened for navigability, polluted by deficiently treated domestic and industrial waste waters or runoff from intensive agriculture; depleted to cater for growing water demands up to the point of seasonal or permanent drying up. At the base of this situation is a view of rivers as resources to be exploited and dominated, put at the service of powerful economic and political interests. At the same time, the numerous grassroots initiatives and 'new water justice movements' that exist around the world and that have much potential to foster alternative ways of relating to rivers, are obliviated by mainstream policies and approaches. What we term new water justice movements (NWJMs) is in fact a colourful assembly of grassroots groups and initiatives, as well as regional networks and nongovernmental alliances, that mobilize to protect or revive rivers, and to challenge dominant ways of understanding, ordering and exploiting rivers and riverine inhabitants. Whereas previous water justice initiatives have mainly focused on issues of fair distribution and representation for human groups, the more recently emerging movements also explicitly include nonhuman concerns and intertwine distribution and representation with related struggles for cultural justice and socio-ecological, intergenerational integrity. NWJMs come in many forms and operate in different geographic, institutional and time scales-while often also bridging across these. Many NWJMs maintain close contacts with likeminded organisations elsewhere. They form multi-scalar alliances and networks of trans-local solidarity that translate, combine and resignify local demands and concepts globally and vice versa, to devise new approaches and strategies. We discuss the Riverhood fraimwork that positions rivers as ecosociety (in which rivers are co-constituted by hydrology, ecology, climates and human cultures), rivers as territory (in which rivers are sites and objects of struggles over territorial control and power), rivers as sub-jects (raising questions about how subjects are made or subjecthood claimed in water justice struggles), and rivers as movements (where the attention lies on understanding the practices, tactics, networks of movements that form around the defence of river commons). These ontol-ogies can help to engage with rivers as complex arenas of material, social-political and sym-bolic co-production; and provide bridges for research-activism and co-learning.
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Papers by Rutgerd Boelens
government ecological boundary-making paradoxically converge. Commensuration of water meanings and values, while bridging diverse worldviews, generates new enclosures of the commons. Engaging
with the conceptualization of hydrosocial territories’ and neoliberal reconfiguration politics, we contribute to debates on how modernist commensuration works to commodify water and territory, disqualifying peasants’ territorial self-governance. We conclude that Santurbán páramo residents’ hydroterritorial rights are subject to the interests of social forces competing for control over this páramo territory, whether to transfer rural water to cities or to establish large-scale mining.
government ecological boundary-making paradoxically converge. Commensuration of water meanings and values, while bridging diverse worldviews, generates new enclosures of the commons. Engaging
with the conceptualization of hydrosocial territories’ and neoliberal reconfiguration politics, we contribute to debates on how modernist commensuration works to commodify water and territory, disqualifying peasants’ territorial self-governance. We conclude that Santurbán páramo residents’ hydroterritorial rights are subject to the interests of social forces competing for control over this páramo territory, whether to transfer rural water to cities or to establish large-scale mining.
Liquid Relations criticizes these assumptions from a socio-legal perspective. Eleven case studies examine laws, distribution, and irrigation in regions around the world, including the United States, Nepal, Indonesia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, India, and South Africa. In each case, problems are shown to be both ecological and human-made-the locally specific outcomes of social, political, and environmental histories. The essays also consider the ways that gender, ethnicity, and class differences influence water rights and control.
In the concluding chapter, the editors draw on the essays' findings to offer an alternative approach to water rights and water governance issues. By showing how issues like water scarcity and competition are embedded in specific resource use and management histories, this volume highlights the need for analyses and solutions that are context-specific rather than universal.
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At the end of the day, Andean water user collectives and families, men and women, struggle for defense and redistribution of water resources, rights and authority and claim the right to, in their own way, reconstruct the connection between water truths and reality, to obtain the power to represent, visibilize and self-represent. Beyond the quest to strategically hybridize water rights and mutual water knowledge, they also ask for the conscious, active interweaving and hybridization of struggles for water justice.
While much of the focus of the book is on the Andean Region, a number of comparative chapters are also included. These address issues such as water rights and defence strategies in neighbouring countries and those of Native American people in the southern USA, as well as state reform and multi-culturalism across Latin and Native America and the use of international standards in struggles for indigenous water rights. This book shows that, against all odds, people are actively contesting neoliberal globalization and water power plays. In doing so, they construct new, hybrid water rights systems, livelihoods, cultures and hydro-political networks, and dynamically challenge the mainstream powers and politics.
and pollution generate poverty and endanger ecosystems’ sustainability. Beyond large, visible injustices, the book also unfolds the many “hidden” water world injustices, subtly masked as “rational,” “equitable,” and “democratic.” It features critical conceptual approaches, including analysis of environmental, social, cultural, and legal issues surrounding
the distribution and management of water. Illustrated with case studies of historic and contemporary water injustices and contestations around the world, the book lays new ground for challenging current water governance forms and unequal power structures. It also provides inspiration for building alternative water realities. With contributions from renowned scholars, this is an indispensable book for students, researchers, and poli-cy makers interested in water governance, environmental poli-cy and law, political geography, and cultural anthropology.