Social Science Research Council

“The Global Water Regime, National Water Policy, and Social Movements in Bolivia and South Africa”

My research project will explore the operation of what I call the global water regime - a relatively coherent set of norms and rules about how water should be managed promoted by global institutions. Specifically, it seeks to study the interrelations between the global water regime, national and local water policy, and social movement activity in the water sector, through the analysis of the cases of Bolivia and South Africa.

In order to do that, my research will take the form of a multi-sited ethnography (complemented with semi-structured interviews and the analysis of printed materials) which will proceed in three stages of four months each starting in January 2008. The first stage will take me to South Africa. There, I will analyze how a government committed to the defense of the social and economic rights of its citizens also adopted neoliberal water policies, and how it attempts to make these seemingly contradictory sets of policy compatible. I will also explore the form and functioning of the significant degree of popular opposition to the new water policies in the country. The second stage will take place in Bolivia, where I will investigate the implementation of new water policies congruent with the global water regime by a government committed to neoliberal reforms, as well as the massive social movement protests that opposed these policies. Finally, the last stage of my research will explore the inner workings of the global water regime itself. In this stage I will study the main actors in the global water regime, including the governments of powerful countries, international organizations, transnational corporations, and international NGOs.

My ultimate goal is to be able to understand the connections between the global and the local in the water sector, following how water policy travels across geographic levels and is translated as it is adopted by actors confronted with very different contexts and pressures.