Dis/Articulations and the Hydrosocial Cycle: Postapartheid Geographies of Agrarian Change in the Ceres Valley, South Africa

Abstract

This paper analyzes the role of the hydrosocial cycle in producing and sustaining uneven geographies of capitalist agriculture in the Ceres Valley, a major center of South Africa's high-value deciduous fruit industry. I explore ways in which the mobilization, appropriation, and transformation of water resources become intertwined with and reinforce the radicalized capitalist relations that have characterized the local political economy of export fruit production since the 19th century. These relations have solidified over time as they have been able to adapt to shifting political-economic and politicalecological dynamics. Focusing on the postapartheid period, I examine how white agrarian capital has been able to maintain and even strengthen its dominance over the regional economy despite the dramatic shuffling of political and economic priorities. I pay particular attention to how the fatal combination of the liberalization of agricultural markets and the financialization of water supply becomes articulated through interconnected sociospatial processes of dispossession, devaluation, and disinvestment. I argue that questions of access to and control over the hydrosocial cycle not only reveal how marginalized and radicalized social actors-farm workers, small-scale farmers, township residents-become differentially articulated with and disarticulated from existing and emerging circuits of capital accumulation. It also opens promising analytical and political avenues through which to illuminate and confront uneven geographies of capitalist development in ways that highlight the linked sociospatial processes of production and social reproduction.

The Hydrosocial Cycle: Understanding Water as a Socionatural Production

“…These water governance changes reshape local hydrosocial territories through export production chains, which generate asymmetric relationships between transnational and local companies and communities (Vos and Hinojosa 2016). Thus, it is necessary to perform a multiscale analysis to understand the uneven socio-spatial processes, articulated through, in the Ceres Valley (South Africa) case, the liberalization of agricultural markets and the financialization of water supply (Debanné 2013). Another field of research that opens up in this regard is the growing participation and influence of financial power over water supply systems , or how the process of water circulation is increasingly being articulated from the financial nexus (Swyngedouw 2009).…”

Flooding water and society

“…Debbané observes that hydrosocial relations in rural South Africa have evolved in tandem with the transformation of land tenure systems. In fact, for Debbané, “land and water dispossession are inextricably intertwined” (Debbané, , p. 2557). Unfortunately, the materiality of that particular connection remains marginal in the article.…”

El megaproyecto de la presa El Zapotillo como nodo centroidal de conflicto intratable. Un análisis desde la ecología política

“…La utilización de un lente analítico de tipo políticoecológico también enfatiza las relaciones que existen entre el ciclo hidrológico y los procesos sociales. Esta visión ha dado en llamarse el "ciclo hidrosocial" (Aguilera-Klink, Pérez-Moriana y Sánchez-García, 2000; Debbané, 2013;Linton, 2014). La conceptualización del ciclo hidrosocial permite integrar la actividad antropogénica, que genera cambios socioambientales, y los ecosistemas vistos desde una perspectiva interescalar; es decir, una visión en la cual se acepta que el acceso a recursos hídricos es dependiente de la escala geográfica, de la huella hídrica de las diferentes urbes en la región bajo análisis, y de las desigualdades, desequilibrios y asimetrías en las relaciones de poder que existen entre los varios actores involucrados en la gestión del recurso hídrico.…”