• DOI:10.1080/1045575052000335384
• Corpus ID: 131323368

Dispossessing H2O: the contested terrain of water privatization

@article{Swyngedouw2005DispossessingHT,
  title={Dispossessing H2O: the contested terrain of water privatization},
  author={Erik Swyngedouw},
  journal={Capitalism Nature Socialism},
  year={2005},
  volume={16},
  pages={81 - 98}
}

• E. Swyngedouw
• Published 1 March 2005
• Economics
• Capitalism Nature Socialism

This paper considers how tactics of “accumulation by dispossession” have become pivotal strategies in contemporary global accumulation dynamics. This will be assessed in the context of the recent waves of privatization and de-collectivization of water – in particular, urban water – resources around the world. In the first part of the paper, the current wave of neoliberal privatization policies is contextualized historically and politically. In a subsequent part, the central and contradictory role of the State or state-like institutions, in their Faustian pact with hegemonic neoliberal strategies of dispossession, will be detailed. This, in turn, will lead us to a consideration of the continuing centrality of “governing” institutions in the organization and regulation of the water sector, and to a discussion of the weakened position of the citizen vis-à-vis these new modes of water governance. Finally, the contradictions of water privatization will be explored in conjunction with the mounting voices of protest and discontent that challenge the received wisdom that market forces provide the socially optimal access to – and allocation or distribution of – water. While portrayed by the pundits of neoliberalism as the panacea for all manner of social, economic, and environmental ills, we shall consider the radically contested and contestable nature of such strategies of dispossession. These sprawling forms of social resistance and the checkered success of recent privatization programs suggest that intensifying social struggle points to the possibilities of transforming the “Stalinism of the market” and may open the path for more progressive socio-environmental politics.