Jaime Hoogesteger
Biographic Data
| ID | 664646 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jaime Hoogesteger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jaime |
| FAMILY NAME | Hoogesteger |
| SIGNATURE | HOOGESTEGER J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Wageningen University & Research |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6784-0552 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 661 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Arraigo with the river: Cracks of care amidst water violences along the Arenal River, Colombia
This article examines how rural youth in the Arenal River, Colombia are forging modes of arraigo [rootedness] through care practices amidst overlapping violences. Through action-research with young people engaged in community-tourism, we explore how care for the river enacts an ethico-political practice that confronts what we term ‘water violences’: the accumulated effects of the modern/colonial order materialized in hydroextractivism, armed conf…
Matterialising grassroots hydrosocial territories: Visualising and politically reframing what matters in the upper Yanuncay River, Ecuador
The Yanuncay River Basin, in Azuay Province, Southern Ecuador, is facing mounting pressures from extractive industries, particularly large-scale mining and hydropower projects, that seek to grab and control the river and related territories. This article presents the counter-mapping methodology that was used with impacted communities residing along the river's headwaters and páramos. It presents and discusses how through an engaged participatory …
Permeable river-worlds: Emergent caring politics along the Dílar and Monachil rivers in southern Spain
This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.This article draws on conversations and ethnographic observations with activists in Granada, Andalusia, as they learn to respond 'otherwise' to the socioecological challenges of the Dílar and Monachil rivers. Inhabiting the disorienting space opened by asking how to care for rivers amidst the multiple grievances of the "scandalous thing" (Haraway, 1991), these activists…
How humans bend the hydrograph: Experiences in mitigating drought through small-scale managed aquifer recharge
Small-scale managed aquifer recharge (s-MAR) can help replenish depleted aquifers, extend groundwater availability during dry seasons and drought, and reduce flooding. Whether s-MAR brings these benefits not only depends on hydrogeological conditions and technical design, but also on how interventions align with social norms, governance structures and local priorities. Drawing on s-MAR experiences in Ethiopia, India and Mexico, we apply a critica…
Hydrosocial river modernization: The enclosure of amphibious cultures in Canal del Dique, Colombia
The transformation of rivers has been part and parcel of human history and its development. While often portrayed as ‘the’ way towards development through modernization, these transformations often entail river commons’ enclosures and the loss of related environments and cultures. In this article we explore how in the subregion of Canal del Dique in Northern Colombia, the river has changed through the construction of infrastructure, mainly in the…
Assessing UNCCD’s role in advancing social learning for combating desertification, land degradation, and drought
Addressing the challenges of desertification, land degradation and drought (DLDD) requires exchanging knowledge and practices across diverse actors, institutions, disciplines, and regions. Established in 1994 as one of the three Rio Conventions, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) functions not only as a legally binding international agreement but also as a global collaborative platform for deepening knowledge and tech…
The co-evolution of collective groundwater management: Understanding the interdependencies between user-based organizations, remote sensing and state agency support in the La Mancha Oriental Aquifer, …
Groundwater governance is a challenge in most arid and semi-arid areas of the world. In many aquifers, groundwater extraction exceeds natural recharge, leading to steady aquifer declines with negative consequences for the social, agricultural and ecological systems that depend on these aquifers. In this article we analyze how in the semi-arid the La Mancha Eastern Aquifer, Spain, organized groundwater users, in close collaboration with knowledge …
River co-learning arenas: Principles and Practices for Transdisciplinary Knowledge Co-Creation and Multi-Scalar (Inter)action
This paper develops the methodological concept of river co-learning arenas (RCAs) and explores their potential to strengthen innovative grassroots river initiatives, enliven river commons, regenerate river ecologies, and foster greater socio-ecological justice. 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 t…
Multispecies imaginaries for river justice: Mobilising in defence of the Piatúa River, Ecuador
This paper focuses on multispecies imaginaries and their relation to actions, movements, and coalitions for river justice. It does so based on the case of the Piatúa River, a free-flowing, highly biodiverse river in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Since 2014, the Piatúa has been threatened by hydropower development that would seriously impact its biodiversity and the livelihoods of local Kichwa communities. Members of these communities, working with allie…
Power and politics across species boundaries: Towards Multispecies Justice in Riverine Hydrosocial Territories
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: hy…
Producing conservation territories: Transforming páramos in Ecuador
During the last decades, Ecuador's páramo wetlands have become increasingly important sites for environmental governance. Historically, these humid, highly biodiverse Andean moorland ecosystems were seen as empty desolate and unproductive spaces, and later, between the 1960s and 1990s, as spaces for expanding the agricultural frontier of rural communities. Since the end of the 1990s, this changed as páramos came to be seen as important spaces for…
Contested Socio-Material Transformations in Irrigation Communities: Exploring New Entry Points for the Analysis of Commons and Collectives
The International Journal of the Commons is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed open-access journal, dedicated to furthering the understanding of institutions for use and management of resources that are (or could be) enjoyed collectively.These resources may be part of the natural world (e.g. forests, climate systems, or the oceans) or they may be created (e.g. infrastructures such as irrigation systems, the internet or (scientific) knowledge, for…
Imaginaries of place in territorialization processes: Transforming the Oyacachi páramos through nature conservation and water transfers in the Ecuadorian highlands
How Ecuadorian páramos are perceived has drastically changed over the last five decades. From cold, hostile, and unproductive hinterlands, páramos have changed to become areas for biodiversity conservation and ‘water towers’ that ought to be protected to provide clean and abundant water for cities and irrigation. To understand how these changing perceptions of páramos relate to interventions and their on-the-ground negotiation by local communitie…
River Commoning and the State: A Cross‐Country Analysis of River Defense Collectives
Grassroots initiatives that aim to defend, protect, or restore rivers and riverine environments have proliferated around the world in the last three decades. Some of the most emblematic initiatives are anti-dam and anti-mining movements that have been framed, by and large, as civil society versus the state movements. In this article, we aim to bring nuance to such framings by analyzing broader and diverse river-commoning initiatives and the state…
Linking Institutions for Collective Action to Agrarian Change: Insights from Transformations in an Irrigation Community, Central Mexico
In commons studies, broad attention has been given to understanding how and why natural resource management systems function through institutions for collective action. However, little attention has been given to how agrarian change impacts institutions for collective action and related resource access. In this paper we address this gap through the case study of a groundwater irrigation community in the northeast of the state of Guanajuato, Centr…
Socio-Material Bricolage: (Co)Shaping of Irrigation Institutions and Infrastructures
Drip irrigation is often considered a technological solution to increase water use efficiency and crop productivity. However, all too often, its social and institutional entanglements are ignored. This paper treats drip irrigation as a socio-material assemblage and discusses the social and institutional changes triggered by the introduction of drip irrigation infrastructure in Ağlasun, a rural town located in the southwest of Turkey. Through an e…
Imaginaries and the Commons: Insights From Irrigation Modernization in Valencia, Spain
In this article we introduce the notion of imaginaries as a conceptual entry to study and better understand how and why commons re-create and transform. We do so by first exploring imaginaries as assemblages, and second by analytically dividing imaginaries in dominant and alternative imaginaries. While the former refer to how people imagine and live their social existence around built expectations and their underlying notions, the latter refers t…
Resisting, leveraging, and reworking climate change adaptation projects from below: Placing adaptation in Ecuador's agrarian struggle
As climate change escalates, donors, international organizations, and state actors are implementing adaptation projects. Embedded 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 adapta…
Riverhood: Political Ecologies of Socionature Commoning and Translocal Struggles for Water Justice
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 …
Mapping the expansion of berry greenhouses onto Michoacán’s ejido lands, México
Agricultural transformations have significantly contributed to the global market’s year-round supply of capital-intensive greenhouse-grown crops. For instance, berry production in México is increasingly relying on greenhouse systems to meet the growing demand of international markets, particularly in the USA. It is still unclear to what extent these transformations are related to land tenure, as data on greenhouse distribution often do not exist,…
Water assemblages in hydrosocial territories: Connecting place, space, and time through the cultural-material signification of water in coastal Peru
This article analyzes how smallholders of Subtanjalla, in coastal Peru, conceive irrigation water as a central element and carrier of hydrosocial relations and territories. We base our analysis on an exploration of the local notions of agua nueva and yocle. These two notions bind together time, space, nature and culture into specific understandings of territorial connections and reciprocities. Through these understandings water is much more than …
(Re)making hydrosocial territories: Materializing and contesting imaginaries and subjectivities through hydraulic infrastructure
Infrastructures and their roles and connections to and in territories and territorialization processes have increasingly become objects of study in political geography scholarship. In this contribution, we build on these emerging insights and advance them by further conceptually disentangling the agential role of infrastructure. We bring together the notions of territory, governmentality, imaginaries and subjectivities, to clarify how exactly hyd…
Bee mietii rak rkabni nis (The people know how to seed water): A Zapotec experience in adapting to water scarcity and drought
We are facing a global water crisis exacerbated by hydro-climatic extremes related to climate change. Water scarcity is expected to increasingly affect indigenous and marginalized populations. Supporting the sovereignty of indigenous and rural populations to create water secure futures through place-based knowledge, local management, and Community-based Adaptation (CBA) measures may help tackle this crisis. Zapotec communities in Oaxaca, Mexico h…
The end of the rural/urban divide? Migration, proletarianization, differentiation and peasant production in an ejido , Central Mexico
This article explores the relations between agricultural production, international migration, wage labour and processes of differentiation among peasant households. It does so based on the analysis of the ejido Jesús María in the northeast of the state of Guanajuato, Central Mexico. The history of this ejido and how Mexican neoliberal policies led to increased levels of migration and proletarianization since at least the early 1990s is presented.…
Corporate labour standards and work quality: Insights from the agro-export sector of Guanajuato, Central Mexico
In this article we analyse how workers perceive corporate labour standards and the related work conditions in the agro-export sector of Northern Guanajuato, Central Mexico. We do so by first comparing labour standards on local farms to labour standards at an international fresh vegetable production, harvesting, processing and export company that has explicit corporate labour standards. Second, we present how workers from two rural communities of …
Hydrosocial territories: A Political Ecology Perspective
We define and explore hydrosocial territories as spatial configurations of people, institutions, water flows, hydraulic technology and the biophysical environment that revolve around the control of water. Territorial politics finds expression in encounters of diverse actors with divergent spatial and political-geographical interests. Their territory-building projections and strategies compete, superimpose and align to strengthen specific water-co…
Riverhood: Political Ecologies of Socionature Commoning and Translocal Struggles for Water Justice
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 …
(Re)making hydrosocial territories: Materializing and contesting imaginaries and subjectivities through hydraulic infrastructure
Infrastructures and their roles and connections to and in territories and territorialization processes have increasingly become objects of study in political geography scholarship. In this contribution, we build on these emerging insights and advance them by further conceptually disentangling the agential role of infrastructure. We bring together the notions of territory, governmentality, imaginaries and subjectivities, to clarify how exactly hyd…
Water reform governmentality in Ecuador: Neoliberalism, centralization, and the restraining of polycentric authority and community rule-making
Grassroots scalar politics: Insights from peasant water struggles in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Andes
Governmentalities, hydrosocial territories & recognition politics: The making of objects and subjects for climate change adaptation in Ecuador
Adaptation to climate change has become a major policy and project focus for donors and governments globally. In this article, we provide insight into how adaptation projects mobilize distinct imaginaries and knowledge claims that create territories for intervention (the objects) as well as targeted populations (the subjects) to sustain them. Drawing on two emblematic climate change adaptation projects in Ecuador, we show how these objects and su…
Commoditizing Water Territories: The Clash between Andean Water Rights Cultures and Payment for Environmental Services Policies
In the Andean region, the growing water demand of expanding cities, extractive industries, and local and transnational agribusiness puts increasing pressure on the land and water resources of peasa
Resisting, leveraging, and reworking climate change adaptation projects from below: Placing adaptation in Ecuador's agrarian struggle
As climate change escalates, donors, international organizations, and state actors are implementing adaptation projects. Embedded 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 adapta…
Water assemblages in hydrosocial territories: Connecting place, space, and time through the cultural-material signification of water in coastal Peru
This article analyzes how smallholders of Subtanjalla, in coastal Peru, conceive irrigation water as a central element and carrier of hydrosocial relations and territories. We base our analysis on an exploration of the local notions of agua nueva and yocle. These two notions bind together time, space, nature and culture into specific understandings of territorial connections and reciprocities. Through these understandings water is much more than …
Intensive groundwater use and (in)equity: Processes and governance challenges
Trans-Forming Social Capital Around Water: Water User Organizations, Water Rights, and Nongovernmental Organizations in Cangahua, the Ecuadorian Andes
Although the community represents a very important level at which existing social capital is used to mobilize resources and collective action in the Andes, many irrigation systems need supracommunity cooperation for their management. Based on a case study of the Guanguilquí and Porotog irrigation systems in the northern Ecuadorian Highlands, this article argues that external nongovernmental organizations can play an important role in facilitating…
Power and politics across species boundaries: Towards Multispecies Justice in Riverine Hydrosocial Territories
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: hy…
Scalar Politics in Sectoral Reforms: Negotiating the Implementation Of water Policies in Ecuador (1990–2008)
Regulating groundwater use: The challenges of policy implementation in Guanajuato, Central Mexico
Around the world it has proven very difficult to develop policies and interventions that ensure socio-environmentally sustainable groundwater use and exploitation. In the state of Guanajuato, Central Mexico, both the national government and the decentralized state government have pursued to regulate groundwater use through direct state control, groundwater markets, energy pricing, and user self-regulation. We present and analyze these regulatory …
Imaginaries and the Commons: Insights From Irrigation Modernization in Valencia, Spain
In this article we introduce the notion of imaginaries as a conceptual entry to study and better understand how and why commons re-create and transform. We do so by first exploring imaginaries as assemblages, and second by analytically dividing imaginaries in dominant and alternative imaginaries. While the former refer to how people imagine and live their social existence around built expectations and their underlying notions, the latter refers t…
Socio-Material Bricolage: (Co)Shaping of Irrigation Institutions and Infrastructures
Drip irrigation is often considered a technological solution to increase water use efficiency and crop productivity. However, all too often, its social and institutional entanglements are ignored. This paper treats drip irrigation as a socio-material assemblage and discusses the social and institutional changes triggered by the introduction of drip irrigation infrastructure in Ağlasun, a rural town located in the southwest of Turkey. Through an e…
NGOs and the Democratization of Ecuadorian Water Governance: Insights from the Multi-Stakeholder Platform el Foro de los Recursos Hídricos
NGOs have taken up an increasing number of roles and responsibilities in Latin American societies. Based on a study of the multi-stakeholder platform, the Water Resources Forum in Ecuador, this paper shows how through the creation of a broad network of NGOs, academics, grassroots water users organizations and governmental actors; this platform has been able to contribute to the democratization of water governance. This paper analyses the internat…
Multispecies imaginaries for river justice: Mobilising in defence of the Piatúa River, Ecuador
This paper focuses on multispecies imaginaries and their relation to actions, movements, and coalitions for river justice. It does so based on the case of the Piatúa River, a free-flowing, highly biodiverse river in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Since 2014, the Piatúa has been threatened by hydropower development that would seriously impact its biodiversity and the livelihoods of local Kichwa communities. Members of these communities, working with allie…
River Commoning and the State: A Cross‐Country Analysis of River Defense Collectives
Grassroots initiatives that aim to defend, protect, or restore rivers and riverine environments have proliferated around the world in the last three decades. Some of the most emblematic initiatives are anti-dam and anti-mining movements that have been framed, by and large, as civil society versus the state movements. In this article, we aim to bring nuance to such framings by analyzing broader and diverse river-commoning initiatives and the state…
Linking Institutions for Collective Action to Agrarian Change: Insights from Transformations in an Irrigation Community, Central Mexico
In commons studies, broad attention has been given to understanding how and why natural resource management systems function through institutions for collective action. However, little attention has been given to how agrarian change impacts institutions for collective action and related resource access. In this paper we address this gap through the case study of a groundwater irrigation community in the northeast of the state of Guanajuato, Centr…
The politics of water democracy: Insights from grassroot struggles in the Ecuadorian Highlands
In the past two decades spaces for user participation have been opened within water governance structures at many scales. In this contribution, based on a case study of the Provincial Water Users Federation Interjuntas‐Chimborazo in the Ecuadorian Highlands, I explore how and why formal participation of water users in itself is problematic in terms of democracy. The case shows that for organised peasant water users to work on more democratic wate…
River co-learning arenas: Principles and Practices for Transdisciplinary Knowledge Co-Creation and Multi-Scalar (Inter)action
This paper develops the methodological concept of river co-learning arenas (RCAs) and explores their potential to strengthen innovative grassroots river initiatives, enliven river commons, regenerate river ecologies, and foster greater socio-ecological justice. 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 t…
Contested Socio-Material Transformations in Irrigation Communities: Exploring New Entry Points for the Analysis of Commons and Collectives
The International Journal of the Commons is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed open-access journal, dedicated to furthering the understanding of institutions for use and management of resources that are (or could be) enjoyed collectively.These resources may be part of the natural world (e.g. forests, climate systems, or the oceans) or they may be created (e.g. infrastructures such as irrigation systems, the internet or (scientific) knowledge, for…
Imaginaries of place in territorialization processes: Transforming the Oyacachi páramos through nature conservation and water transfers in the Ecuadorian highlands
How Ecuadorian páramos are perceived has drastically changed over the last five decades. From cold, hostile, and unproductive hinterlands, páramos have changed to become areas for biodiversity conservation and ‘water towers’ that ought to be protected to provide clean and abundant water for cities and irrigation. To understand how these changing perceptions of páramos relate to interventions and their on-the-ground negotiation by local communitie…
Four perspectives on water for global food production and international trade: Incommensurable objectives and implications
Democratizing Water Governance from the Grassroots: The Development of Interjuntas-Chimborazo in the Ecuadorian Andes
Making water management more democratic through the participation of water users, while crucially including the poor, has often proven elusive in practice. Through an in-depth case study, this article analyzes how the provincial water users federation Interjuntas-Chimborazo was consolidated in the Ecuadorian Andes. The case illustrates the critical role external actors can play in the consolidation of federative organizations through methodologic…
Trans-Forming Social Capital Around Water: Water User Organizations, Water Rights, and Nongovernmental Organizations in Cangahua, the Ecuadorian Andes
Although the community represents a very important level at which existing social capital is used to mobilize resources and collective action in the Andes, many irrigation systems need supracommunity cooperation for their management. Based on a case study of the Guanguilquí and Porotog irrigation systems in the northern Ecuadorian Highlands, this article argues that external nongovernmental organizations can play an important role in facilitating…
Social Capital in Water User Organizations of the Ecuadorian Highlands
In this article, I explore how new water user organizations have developed in formerly state managed irrigation systems in the Ecuadorian highlands since the 1990s. The article is based on an in-depth case study of the Pillaro irrigation system and illustrations of other cases. These water user organizations have become responsible for irrigation system management and maintenance, which has been carried out based on the mobilization of collective…
Water reform governmentality in Ecuador: Neoliberalism, centralization, and the restraining of polycentric authority and community rule-making
Commoditizing Water Territories: The Clash between Andean Water Rights Cultures and Payment for Environmental Services Policies
In the Andean region, the growing water demand of expanding cities, extractive industries, and local and transnational agribusiness puts increasing pressure on the land and water resources of peasa
Normative structures, collaboration and conflict in irrigation; a case study of the Pillaro North Canal Irrigation System, Ecuadorian Highlands
This paper analyzes conflict and collaboration and their relation to normative structures based on a case study of the history and external interventions of the Píllaro North Canal Irrigation System in the Ecuadorian Highlands. It does so by using Ostrom’s framework for analyzing the sustainability of socio-ecological systems together with an analysis of the normative structures that define the governance systems through which the interactions in…
Normative structures, collaboration and conflict in irrigation; a case study of the Pillaro North Canal Irrigation System, Ecuadorian Highlands
This paper analyzes conflict and collaboration and their relation to normative structures based on a case study of the history and external interventions of the Píllaro North Canal Irrigation System in the Ecuadorian Highlands. It does so by using Ostrom’s framework for analyzing the sustainability of socio-ecological systems together with an analysis of the normative structures that define the governance systems through which the interactions in…
Intensive groundwater use and (in)equity: Processes and governance challenges
NGOs and the Democratization of Ecuadorian Water Governance: Insights from the Multi-Stakeholder Platform el Foro de los Recursos Hídricos
NGOs have taken up an increasing number of roles and responsibilities in Latin American societies. Based on a study of the multi-stakeholder platform, the Water Resources Forum in Ecuador, this paper shows how through the creation of a broad network of NGOs, academics, grassroots water users organizations and governmental actors; this platform has been able to contribute to the democratization of water governance. This paper analyses the internat…
Grassroots scalar politics: Insights from peasant water struggles in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Andes
Territorial pluralism: Water users’ multi-scalar struggles against state ordering in Ecuador’s highlands
Ecuadorian state policies and institutional reforms have territorialized water since the 1960s. Peasant and indigenous communities have challenged this ordering locally since the 1990s by creating multi-scalar federations and networks. These enable marginalized water users to defend their water, autonomy and voice at broader scales. Analysis of these processes shows that water governance takes shape in contexts of territorial pluralism centred on…
The politics of water democracy: Insights from grassroot struggles in the Ecuadorian Highlands
In the past two decades spaces for user participation have been opened within water governance structures at many scales. In this contribution, based on a case study of the Provincial Water Users Federation Interjuntas‐Chimborazo in the Ecuadorian Highlands, I explore how and why formal participation of water users in itself is problematic in terms of democracy. The case shows that for organised peasant water users to work on more democratic wate…
Hydrosocial territories: A Political Ecology Perspective
We define and explore hydrosocial territories as spatial configurations of people, institutions, water flows, hydraulic technology and the biophysical environment that revolve around the control of water. Territorial politics finds expression in encounters of diverse actors with divergent spatial and political-geographical interests. Their territory-building projections and strategies compete, superimpose and align to strengthen specific water-co…
Grassroots scalar politics in the Peruvian Andes
This chapter shows how Andean communities, in defence of their waters, successfully engage in grassroots scalar politics to create and cultivate alliances and associations with national NGOs, regional governments, transnational actors such as the Latin American Water Tribunal (TLA) and broader water education and solidarity networks. The lens of grassroots scalar politics offers an entry point to improve the understanding of the communities' dyna…
Regulating groundwater use: The challenges of policy implementation in Guanajuato, Central Mexico
Around the world it has proven very difficult to develop policies and interventions that ensure socio-environmentally sustainable groundwater use and exploitation. In the state of Guanajuato, Central Mexico, both the national government and the decentralized state government have pursued to regulate groundwater use through direct state control, groundwater markets, energy pricing, and user self-regulation. We present and analyze these regulatory …
Scalar Politics in Sectoral Reforms: Negotiating the Implementation Of water Policies in Ecuador (1990–2008)
Four perspectives on water for global food production and international trade: Incommensurable objectives and implications
Governmentalities, hydrosocial territories & recognition politics: The making of objects and subjects for climate change adaptation in Ecuador
Adaptation to climate change has become a major policy and project focus for donors and governments globally. In this article, we provide insight into how adaptation projects mobilize distinct imaginaries and knowledge claims that create territories for intervention (the objects) as well as targeted populations (the subjects) to sustain them. Drawing on two emblematic climate change adaptation projects in Ecuador, we show how these objects and su…
Bee mietii rak rkabni nis (The people know how to seed water): A Zapotec experience in adapting to water scarcity and drought
We are facing a global water crisis exacerbated by hydro-climatic extremes related to climate change. Water scarcity is expected to increasingly affect indigenous and marginalized populations. Supporting the sovereignty of indigenous and rural populations to create water secure futures through place-based knowledge, local management, and Community-based Adaptation (CBA) measures may help tackle this crisis. Zapotec communities in Oaxaca, Mexico h…
The end of the rural/urban divide? Migration, proletarianization, differentiation and peasant production in an ejido , Central Mexico
This article explores the relations between agricultural production, international migration, wage labour and processes of differentiation among peasant households. It does so based on the analysis of the ejido Jesús María in the northeast of the state of Guanajuato, Central Mexico. The history of this ejido and how Mexican neoliberal policies led to increased levels of migration and proletarianization since at least the early 1990s is presented.…
Corporate labour standards and work quality: Insights from the agro-export sector of Guanajuato, Central Mexico
In this article we analyse how workers perceive corporate labour standards and the related work conditions in the agro-export sector of Northern Guanajuato, Central Mexico. We do so by first comparing labour standards on local farms to labour standards at an international fresh vegetable production, harvesting, processing and export company that has explicit corporate labour standards. Second, we present how workers from two rural communities of …
Mapping the expansion of berry greenhouses onto Michoacán’s ejido lands, México
Agricultural transformations have significantly contributed to the global market’s year-round supply of capital-intensive greenhouse-grown crops. For instance, berry production in México is increasingly relying on greenhouse systems to meet the growing demand of international markets, particularly in the USA. It is still unclear to what extent these transformations are related to land tenure, as data on greenhouse distribution often do not exist,…
Water assemblages in hydrosocial territories: Connecting place, space, and time through the cultural-material signification of water in coastal Peru
This article analyzes how smallholders of Subtanjalla, in coastal Peru, conceive irrigation water as a central element and carrier of hydrosocial relations and territories. We base our analysis on an exploration of the local notions of agua nueva and yocle. These two notions bind together time, space, nature and culture into specific understandings of territorial connections and reciprocities. Through these understandings water is much more than …
(Re)making hydrosocial territories: Materializing and contesting imaginaries and subjectivities through hydraulic infrastructure
Infrastructures and their roles and connections to and in territories and territorialization processes have increasingly become objects of study in political geography scholarship. In this contribution, we build on these emerging insights and advance them by further conceptually disentangling the agential role of infrastructure. We bring together the notions of territory, governmentality, imaginaries and subjectivities, to clarify how exactly hyd…
Imaginaries of place in territorialization processes: Transforming the Oyacachi páramos through nature conservation and water transfers in the Ecuadorian highlands
How Ecuadorian páramos are perceived has drastically changed over the last five decades. From cold, hostile, and unproductive hinterlands, páramos have changed to become areas for biodiversity conservation and ‘water towers’ that ought to be protected to provide clean and abundant water for cities and irrigation. To understand how these changing perceptions of páramos relate to interventions and their on-the-ground negotiation by local communitie…
Water Governance and Infrastructure (35 works) · Political science (30 works) · Economics (24 works) · Law (21 works) · Geography (20 works) · Politics (19 works) · Sociology (18 works) · Business (17 works) · Law (15 works) · Corporate governance (12 works)