With-against-and-beyond the human right to water. Issue 98 (January 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Angel, James; Loftus, Alex
• Is Part Of: Geoforum. Issue 98(2019)
• Page Start: 206
• Page End: 213
• Publication Date: 2019-01
• Subjects: Right to water -- State theory -- Social movements -- Political ecology -- Political geography -- South Africa; Geography -- Periodicals; Human geography -- Periodicals; Regional planning -- Periodicals; Sciences de la terre -- Périodiques; Géographie -- Périodiques; Géographie humaine -- Périodiques; Aménagement du territoire -- Périodiques; Earth sciences; Geography; Human geography; Regional planning; Periodicals; Electronic journals; 304.205
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.05.002
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0016-7185

Abstract

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.