Beyond scarcity and its management : Sociocultural dimensions of the water crisis in the Atacama Desert
Cantillana, Raphael (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament d'Antropologia Social i Cultural)
Iniesta Arandia, Irene (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals)

Date:	2022
Abstract:	The depletion of freshwater sources by indiscriminate industrial actions is one of the direct causes of the current water crisis. One of the emblematic cases of this problem is the Atacama Desert, a unique hyper-arid zone in which an extensive copper industry depletes its scarce freshwater reserves. This territory, occupied for millennia by indigenous groups, is experiencing a water crisis that threatens its very subsistence. This paper uses the ethnographic method and the Water Justice framework to approach the everyday and often invisible issues of this crisis within the Mamiña community. This Quechua community holds an ambivalent position in front of the copper mine project because of its control of the water rights, the economic interests of some of their members, and the role of the Aymara minority. We suggest that researchers in this field pay more attention to the communities' internal diversity and its relations with the copper industry to understand how the water crisis is detached from its biophysical conceptions to be socioculturally constructed.
Grants:	Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MDM-2015-0552 Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación IJCI-2017-33405
Note:	Unidad de excelencia María de Maeztu CEX2019-000940-M
Rights:	Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, la comunicació pública de l'obra i la creació d'obres derivades, fins i tot amb finalitats comercials, sempre i quan es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original.
Language:	Anglès
Document:	Article ; recerca ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Andean ; Chile ; Ethnography ; Extractivism ; Neo-extractivism Quechua ; Neoliberalism ; Water crisis
Published in:	Water Policy, Vol. 24, Issue 7 (July 2022) , p. 1124-1145, ISSN 1996-9759

DOI: 10.2166/wp.2022.297

22 p, 848.8 KB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Social and Legal Sciences > Research Group on Fundamental and Oriented Anthropology (GRAFO)
Research literature > UAB research groups literature > Research Centres and Groups (research output) > Experimental sciences > Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA)
Articles > Research articles
Articles > Published articles