Smooth flows? Hydrosocial communities, water governance and infrastructural discord in Peru’s southern highlands

Pærregaard, Karsten; Ullberg, Susann Baez; Brandshaug, Malene

doi:10.1080/02508060.2020.1755538

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 36 publications

(49 reference statements)

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“…Additionally, human extractive activities in Peru, related to, for instance, mining projects and large-scale irrigation projects, impact water quality and quantity in many places in the country. In the water shed where Yanque is located, a mega-infrastructure project dams up water in the highlands and transports it primarily to coastal areas where it is used for large scale irrigation (Paerregaard et al 2020;Stensrud 2016;Ullberg 2019). Highland populations are affected not only by the ecological challenges following the extraction of water from the landscape, but also by how the extracted water is distributed in the population.…”

Section: The Yanque Waterworld In the Anthropocenementioning

confidence: 99%

Water, Life, and Loss: Aguasociality and Environmental Change in the Peruvian Andes

Brandshaug

2021

Kritisk Etnografi: Swedish Journal of Anthropology

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Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the Colca Valley community Yanque, this article investigates how small-scale farmers in the Southern Peruvian Andes relate to water and environmental change in intimate ways. It explores how the circulation of water in Yanque binds bodies, soil, crops, and mountains together -in a particular aguasocial sense. Building on the particularities of the Yanque waterworld, neo-material and posthuman scholarship that focus on more-than-human entanglements, and studies within the anthropology of water that foreground water's relationality, I argue for the need of ethnographic attention to aguasocialities. Attending to aguasocialities, my argument goes, implies a focus on more-than-human relations; likewise, it recognises water's potential to be social in its own right, and contributes with alternative stories to the dominant Anthropocene narrative by localising it, bringing in water and inviting to think the world differently.

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Section: The Yanque Waterworld In the Anthropocenementioning

confidence: 99%

Water, Life, and Loss: Aguasociality and Environmental Change in the Peruvian Andes

Brandshaug

2021

Kritisk Etnografi: Swedish Journal of Anthropology

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“…To unpack this assemblage of hydrological, social, and technological circumstances another group of water scholars suggests that we view the hydrologic cycle as a metabolic process produced of not only physical changes and chemical reactions, as modern science claims, but also the social and political relations that manipulate the natural water flow and make water accessible as a resource for human use (Paerregaard et al 2016(Paerregaard et al , 2020. Unlike the term metabolic water which refers to water created inside a living organism through its metabolism, water metabolism stands for the entire process through which water is made and remade both as a natural substance (from liquid to ice and vapor and back again) and as an object of human control (from appropriation to transportation, allocation, consumption, eventually, disposal).…”

Section: Water Metabolismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hualca Hualca providing it with an ethnic identity distinct from other communities in the region. However, after the Peruvian state built a channel that transports water from a watershed above the Colca valley to the coastal desert and that supplies the communities on the Colca river's west bank with water (Paerregaard et al 2020;Stensrud 2016b; Ullberg 2019), Cabanaconde stopped making offerings to Mt. Hualca Hualca (Paerregaard 2013b, c).…”

Section: Metabolic Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lubricating Water Metabolism: How Mountain Offerings Contribute to Water Sustainability in the Peruvian Andes

Paerregaard

2021

Kritisk Etnografi: Swedish Journal of Anthropology

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This article examines how water's transformative quality shapes Andean offering rituals and how these in turn perform the hydrological cycle as a metabolic process that involves humans as well as superhuman beings. It enquires into the offering practices of an Andean community providing an ethnographic account of its water management and the tributes it pays to the mountain and the springs that supply it with water. Building on the concept of water metabolism, the article interrogates the offerings as a replica of the metabolic process that produces water. The argument is that by triggering a "change of matter" of the offering items the ritual transforms these into a gift to the deities that control the water. Moreover, invoking Roy Rappaport's study of rituals as regulators of humans' interaction with the environment, the article suggests that by enacting water metabolism, Andean offerings not only lubricate the hydrological cycle, but they also offer Andean people a window on their own agency and its bearings for their water resources. Reviewing the recent development in a neighbouring settlement and ongoing changes in the community's own water supply, the article concludes that the holistic calibration of the hydrological cycle as a metabolic process which engages both humans and non-humans makes Andean offerings emblematic of the effort to achieve water sustainability anywhere and therefore resilient to change.

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“…Based on the aforementioned empirical case, I argue that water infrastructure holds connective capacities in more than one way (Paerregaard et al 2020). A physical-material connection to the irrigation system creates access to running water for the islanders.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Connective and Disconnective Capacities of Water Infrastructure: The Making of Chile’s Largest Off-grid Solar Power Irrigation System

Greek

2021

Kritisk Etnografi: Swedish Journal of Anthropology

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Based on nearly one year of ethnographic research on an inland island in Southern Chile, this article examines the construction of Chile's largest off-grid solar power irrigation system on Isla Huapi. For decades, the island's indigenous population has put pressure on the Chilean government to provide basic services of electricity and sanitised drinking water. Instead, in 2012, they were provided with a governmental development project that promised an infrastructural system aimed at transporting water from the surrounding lake to their plots for irrigation. Nevertheless, as the construction process progressed over the next few years, islanders found the irrigation system to be a desirable infrastructural connection as it provided them with water in different forms -irrigation water as well as indoor tap water. In this article, I look at the way in which these forms of water became a site of aspiration as well as a site of political struggle between islanders and state actors (government employed engineers). Analysing water and water infrastructure as political and material forms, I argue that struggles over access to water and the forms that waters take, create different connections (and disconnections) not only between water and islanders but also between islanders and the state.

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Smooth flows? Hydrosocial communities, water governance and infrastructural discord in Peru’s southern highlands

Cited by 7 publications

References 36 publications

Water, Life, and Loss: Aguasociality and Environmental Change in the Peruvian Andes

Water, Life, and Loss: Aguasociality and Environmental Change in the Peruvian Andes

Lubricating Water Metabolism: How Mountain Offerings Contribute to Water Sustainability in the Peruvian Andes

The Connective and Disconnective Capacities of Water Infrastructure: The Making of Chile’s Largest Off-grid Solar Power Irrigation System

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