Abstract
In this paper we consider the risk that struggles for the right to water will position the state at the heart of future struggles for water justice. While considering the ways in which water justice activists might avoid reifiying the state, we nevertheless refuse a simplistic rejection of the state as irrelevant or as a simple obstacle to water justice. Instead, we consider ways in which it might be possible to move within against and beyond the state.
Our discussion begins with a brief vignette from South Africa, which, while not typifying the struggle for the right to water sheds light on some of the strategic questions faced by water justice activists. Given the questions posed by the South African case and the paradox with which we began, we then turn to political ecological approaches to the state, finding them to lack an adequate conceptualisation of the constitutive role of struggle in producing the state form. Better capturing the influence of a diverse range of struggles requires revisiting how the state is “derived” as a fetishized form from such processes. Refusing to accept an either/or approach to the relations embodied in the state form, we call for a rethinking of the state when it comes to the human right to water and an approach that seeks to move in-against-and-beyond the state and, in turn, to think and act with-against-and-beyond the right to water.
Our discussion begins with a brief vignette from South Africa, which, while not typifying the struggle for the right to water sheds light on some of the strategic questions faced by water justice activists. Given the questions posed by the South African case and the paradox with which we began, we then turn to political ecological approaches to the state, finding them to lack an adequate conceptualisation of the constitutive role of struggle in producing the state form. Better capturing the influence of a diverse range of struggles requires revisiting how the state is “derived” as a fetishized form from such processes. Refusing to accept an either/or approach to the relations embodied in the state form, we call for a rethinking of the state when it comes to the human right to water and an approach that seeks to move in-against-and-beyond the state and, in turn, to think and act with-against-and-beyond the right to water.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 206-213 |
| Journal | GEOFORUM |
| Volume | 98 |
| Early online date | 19 May 2017 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 2019 |
