Neoliberal commensuration and new enclosures of the commons: mining and market–environmentalism governmentalities

Duarte-Abadía, Bibiana; Boelens, Rutgerd; Buitrago, Emerson

doi:10.1080/21622671.2021.1913216

Cited by 15 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 65 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For many affected communities in Colombia and Latin America, the legacy of Hirschman's benevolent ideas and dreams has turned into veritable nightmares (see, for example, [72,73]). The democratic and energy security policies during the governments of Álvaro Uribe Vélez (2002-2010) and Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2018) intensified the materialization of mega-hydraulic projects, rural violence, and displacement [74][75][76][77]. One illustration of many is the hydroelectric project on the Sogamoso River (see [24]).…”

Section: Liberal Water Policies and Its Utopian Contentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Utopian River Planning and Hydrosocial Territory Transformations in Colombia and Spain

Duarte-Abadía

2023

Water

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper examines how utopian river planning has arisen in Colombia and Spain since the late nineteenth century. Specifically, the paper contributes to understanding how particular ideologies of modernism and development present in territorial planning connect both countries. Taking Thomas More’s classic work ‘Utopia’ as the analytical reference, I analyze how utopian tendencies have traveled through time and space to shape territorial planning and water governance. In both countries, this was evident in the late nineteenth century through the political project to strengthen the nation state. For Spain, I describe the regenerationist movement and the hydraulic utopia led by the Spanish intellectual Joaquín Costa, who forged the dream of a water nationhood. By contrast, in Colombia, several political intellectuals looked at Europe and North America as a source of inspiration to achieve progress by controlling rivers. Through the method of disjunctive comparison, I show how the same utopian notions are expressed in similar ways in distinct contexts: violently governing the flows of rivers, standardizing minds and ordering territories towards capital growth. This paper contributes to grasping the notions and roots of the discourses that have colonized the political water agendas in both countries.

show abstract

Section: Liberal Water Policies and Its Utopian Contentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Utopian River Planning and Hydrosocial Territory Transformations in Colombia and Spain

Duarte-Abadía

2023

Water

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…From this perspective, water becomes a 'multiple' assemblage that cannot be known univocally, but is enacted differently (cf. Bacigalupo, 2018;Cruikshank, 2007;Duarte-Abadía et al, 2021;Verzijl, 2020;Verzijl et al 2019). This allows us to expand and go beyond a narrow focus on the political-geographical disputes among different actors in and around hydrosocial territories, while simultaneously maintaining a focus on socionatural entanglements as produced in particular contexts, histories, and power constellations (Boelens, 2014;Büscher, 2022;Giraud, 2019;Kinkaid, 2019;Menga & Swyngedouw, 2018).…”

Section: Water Ontologies Assemblages and Hydrosocial Territoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Water assemblages in hydrosocial territories: Connecting place, space, and time through the cultural-material signification of water in coastal Peru

2022

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…This calculated design of happiness would be the task of moral and justice experts; common people would lack reason (Bentham 1988(Bentham (1781). In his societal organization, humans would naturally follow the 'self-preference principle', now very popular in new-institutionalist water-governance studies: water users are seen as individual, self-interested water-utility maximizers (Duarte-Abadía et al, 2021;Espeland, 1998;Roth et al, 2015;Vos & Boelens, 2018;Zwarteveen & Boelens, 2014). Later, Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand framed this concept as 'rational greed' or 'selfishness': the universal driving force that, with privateproperty rights and free markets, will ultimately lead to neoliberal utopia.…”

Section: Neoliberal Utopians Calculated Happiness and 'Survival Of Th...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Rivers of Scarcity. Utopian water regimes and flows against the current

Boelens

2022

Alternautas

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Utopians organized space, nature and society to perfection, including land and water governance -- rescuing society from deep-rooted crisis: “The happiest basis for a civilized community, to be universally adopted” (Thomas More, 1516). These days, similarly, well-intended utopian water governance regimes suggest radical transformations to combat the global Water Crisis, controlling deviant natures and humans. In this essay I examine water utopia and dystopia as mirror societies. Modern utopias ignore real-life water cultures, squeeze rivers dry, concentrate water for the few, and blame the victims. But water-user collectives, men and women, increasingly speak up. They ask scholars and students to help question Flying Islands experts’ claims to rationality, democracy and equity; to co-create water knowledges and co-design water governance, building rooted socionatural commons, building “riverhood”.

show abstract

Neoliberal commensuration and new enclosures of the commons: mining and market–environmentalism governmentalities

Cited by 15 publications

References 65 publications

Utopian River Planning and Hydrosocial Territory Transformations in Colombia and Spain

Utopian River Planning and Hydrosocial Territory Transformations in Colombia and Spain

Water assemblages in hydrosocial territories: Connecting place, space, and time through the cultural-material signification of water in coastal Peru

Rivers of Scarcity. Utopian water regimes and flows against the current

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About