Power, Conflicts, and Environmental Communication in the Struggles for Water Justice in Rural Chile: Insights from the Epistemologies of the South and the Anthropology of Power

Abstract

This chapter elaborates conceptual and theoretical insights to advance a conflict- and power-oriented perspective for a critical conceptualization of environmental communication. To this purpose, the chapter develops and builds upon insights from the anthropology of power and the epistemologies of the South. Within this context, the chapter focuses on the theoretical contributions of Paulo Freire and Eric Wolf to critically approach the relations between communication, power, and conflicts within social-ecological relations. Empirically, the chapter offers an analysis of struggles for water justice and water democracy in Chile which is based on interviews, observations, and analysis of documents conducted during fieldwork in three regions and rural areas of Chile. The chapter argues for a critical theorizing of environmental communication to better understand and explain the meanings of normative views of environmental communication, and to also understand how such normative views cannot be separated from the interests of subjects situated in contingent social-ecological relations and conflicts.