Water rights, indigenous legal mobilization and the hybridization of legal pluralism in Southern Chile

Bibliographic Data

ID8253191
AuthorsJoão Vitor Cardoso (0000-0002-2289-2754, University of Chile, corresponding author), Millaray Rayen Pacheco-Pizarro (The University of Melbourne)
Year2022
Volume54
Issue1
Pages117-146
Publication date2022-01-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueLegal Pluralism and Critical Social Analysis (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2770-6869 • E-ISSN: 2770-6877
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/07329113.2021.1951483
OpenAlexW3185578028
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited43

Experiences in Andean countries reveal that constitutional recognition of plural rights systems is not enough to reduce the detrimental impacts of hydropower on Indigenous communities. In this article, critical legal pluralism serves as an entry point from which to raise questions about the formal recognition of Indigenous legal orders in Chile. Drawing from an hydroelectic project that would dam the Neltume lake, this study examines how to take diverse local water rights systems seriously, without wiping them out by equilizing their divergences with logically ordered, hierarchically differentiated, official law. Accordingly, it shows how a series of legal networks overlap, intersect, and mutually shape each other, as it relates to struggles over water control in Mapuche-Williche territories. Through an ongoing engagement with critical anthropological thought, the article ends by addressing how it can be challenging to translate Indigenous epistemologies and political identities into the most official of all state documents, namely, the Constitution. Considering the present-day constitution-making process in Chile, the research combines several techniques for gathering qualitative data, including in-depth interviews with respondents involved in the conflict, videography, document analysis, and secondary historical sources

Constitution · Environmental ethics · Fundamental rights · Human rights · Indigenous · Indigenous rights · Legal pluralism · Legal realism · Legal research · Plural · Political science · Politics · Right to property · Rights of Nature · Sociology · Law · Politics and Society in Latin America · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Ecology

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