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.
Fieldworkers’ notebooks are full of sensations and observations in which the subjectivity of the ethnographer seeps through. Not really science. Much closer to life. Yet in classical anthropology ...they are invisible to the reader. In this book the focus is reversed, turning Anthropology Inside Out as it explores the vibrant backstage life of field notes. What happens when we put them centre stage? Aimed at both curious novice and experienced practitioner, the chapters read as a catalogue of experimental practices teetering on the edge of the tradition: intuitively observational drawings; notes pervaded with paranoia; collective notetaking; crisis-ridden personal confessions; layers of notes in photographs and archives; old flip-flops that trigger memories in mind and body. This exploration of what field notes are, can do and could be, concludes with a constellation of shimmering notes on notes from Michael Taussig, a meta-commentary on anthropologists’ fetishistic relationship with the most personal of professional tools.
How is water best managed - as a common good or a commercial product? This is the key question of this paper that serves as introduction to a special section on Peru's water crisis. The theoretical ...point of departure is Karen Bakker's (2007) discussion of water as "a commons versus a commodity" and the conceptual pitfalls and political dilemmas the dichotomy poses. The paper argues that in order to understand the social and political tensions not only in Peru but also in other countries suffering chronic and potential water shortage we must move beyond the idea that water is best managed as either a commons or a commodity. Rather, the paper suggests, we need to examine water governance as a multi-faceted and complex activity in which water exceeds the dichotomy and sometimes takes the form of commons and commodity at the same time. Unpacking the conceptual baggage of the commons/commodity dichotomy, as well as that of each term separately, the paper problematises their use in the study of Peru's water governance. To illustrate the intricate and often unexpected ways in which water is claimed, accessed and allocated in Peru, it introduces the five studies that comprise the special section, concluding that only by providing in-depth, ethnographic descriptions of the country's water governance can we gain insight into its socio-political complexity and propose alternatives to its water crisis.
In the mid-1960s, 27 muskoxen were translocated from Northeast Greenland to Tatsip Ataa near Kangerlussuaq in West Greenland. In just a few decades, these 27 individuals reproduced to become a ...population of many thousand - now the largest population of muskoxen in Greenland. This article examines human-muskox relations in present-day Kangerlussuaq and Greenland as biosocial multiplications. Muskox-human encounters shape muskoxen as well as human sociality in Kangerlussuaq, and - ultimately - they take part in the shaping of Kangerlussuaq as a place. The article ethnographically unfolds the processes through which muskoxen and humans shape each other and multiply. Diverse relations, meanings, and values come out of muskox-human encounters, and only some result in the muskox becoming a resource, understood as an element that can be utilized in a rational way, where the outcome can be measured in a specific (economic) value. Some of the meanings and values embedded in muskox-human encounters and the relations that come out of them overlap with the notion of resource, while others exceed it. Understanding how muskoxen become a resource, and how they do not, is crucial when wanting to understand human-muskox relations and to manage muskoxen sustainably.
Purification Andersen, Astrid Oberborbeck
Science, technology, & human values,
05/2018, Letnik:
43, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city, engineers work hard to control water flows and provide different sectors with clean and sufficient water. In 2011, only 10 percent of the totality of water ...used daily by Arequipa’s then close to 1 million people—in households, tourism, industry, and mining—was treated before it was returned to the river where it continues its flow downstream towards cultivated fields and, finally, into the Pacific Ocean. It takes specialized knowledge and manifold technologies to manage water and sustain life in Arequipa, and engineers are central actors for making water flow. Examining the ecology of water management, this article asks to what extent we can talk of a way of knowing and enacting water that is particular to engineers. Through engineering practices, a technical domain emerges as separate from and superior to political and social domains. This production of categories can be understood as practices of purification. However, a purely technical grip on water is never possible. Unruly elements, like weather, contamination, urban dwellers, and competing interests, interfere and make processes of intervention unstable. Water is never completely cleaned, and, equally, the continuous processes of purification of categories and domains take place while other processes work to blur their boundaries.
Purification Andersen, Astrid Oberborbeck
Science, technology, & human values,
05/2018, Letnik:
43, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
In Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city, engineers work hard to control water flows and provide different sectors with clean and sufficient water. In 2011, only 10 percent of the totality of water ...used daily by Arequipa’s then close to 1 million people—in households, tourism, industry, and mining—was treated before it was returned to the river where it continues its flow downstream towards cultivated fields and, finally, into the Pacific Ocean. It takes specialized knowledge and manifold technologies to manage water and sustain life in Arequipa, and engineers are central actors for making water flow. Examining the ecology of water management, this article asks to what extent we can talk of a way of knowing and enacting water that is particular to engineers. Through engineering practices, a technical domain emerges as separate from and superior to political and social domains. This production of categories can be understood as practices of purification. However, a purely technical grip on water is never possible. Unruly elements, like weather, contamination, urban dwellers, and competing interests, interfere and make processes of intervention unstable. Water is never completely cleaned, and, equally, the continuous processes of purification of categories and domains take place while other processes work to blur their boundaries.
Det følgende stykke tekst rapporterer fra en række begivenheder, som fandt sted i det danske antropologiske landskab i 2018, og forsøger at portrættere, hvad man kunne kalde dataetnografi i en ...digital tid
Det følgende stykke tekst rapporterer fra en række begivenheder, som fandt sted i det danske antropologiske landskab i 2018, og forsøger at portrættere, hvad man kunne kalde dataetnografi i en ...digital tid
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