Who Owns the Water? The Relation as Unfinished Objectivation in the Mapuche Lived World

Bibliographic Data

ID2145019
AuthorsP Di Giminiani (0000-0002-5031-672X, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, corresponding author), Marcelo González Gálvez (0000-0003-4322-2132, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile)
Year2018
Volume28
Issue3
Pages199-216
Publication date2018-07-03
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropological Forum (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0066-4677 • E-ISSN: 1469-2902
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00664677.2018.1495060
OpenAlexW2883388568
LanguageEN
Citations received18
References cited42

Anthropological approaches to relations have customarily relied on ethnographic accounts of relations empirically observed through fieldwork, overlooking, in general, the ways in which the very notion of relation is locally conceptualised and put into practice. In this article, we provide a general characterisation of how relations are theorised and practiced in indigenous southern Chile. We propose the expression ‘unfinished objectivation’ to refer to an ideal type of relationship in the Mapuche lived world, which corresponds neither to a subject–object dichotomy nor to a totally intersubjective model. Unfinished objectivation presupposes a type of relation in which those entities that are connected are submitted to the force of one another, but only to the unstable and contingent point before which they lose their irreducible autonomy and agency. To explore the model of unfinished objectivation we focus on the human–water relationship, which illustrates the tension between the need for objectivation, as well as recognition of the subjectivity of beings involved in the relationship. Nowhere is this tension clearer than in conflicts over water rights and ownership status, which have arisen from the commodification of water resources in neoliberal Chile

Geography · Relation (database) · Sociology · Computer Science · Indigenous Cultures and History · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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