Marcela López

Broschiertes Buch

Corporatization and the Right to Water in Colombia

Conflicts, Citizenship and Social Inequality

Beschreibung

This book explores how conflicts around access to water shape cities, citizenship and infrastructures by tracing how water is commodified and controlled by the Public Enterprises of Medellín, one of the most successful public water utility companies in the Global South.

Autor

Marcela López is an associated fellow at the Center for Metropolitan Studies and senior lecturer in the Urban Management Program at the Technical University Berlin, Germany.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Routledge
• Seitenzahl: 170
• Erscheinungstermin: 27. Mai 2024
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 234mm x 156mm x 9mm
• Gewicht: 269g
• ISBN-13: 9781032129211
• ISBN-10: 1032129212
• Artikelnr.: 70366870

Rezensionen

"This path-breaking book provides an in-depth look at the way that a publicly-owned and operated utility has increasingly come to behave like private utility. It also outlines a alternative ways to think about public services, highlighting how struggles by low-income residents for decommodification can shape public utilities in progressive and democratic ways. This highly readable book is a must read for anyone concerned about the future of public services in the global South with lessons for the global North as well."
Susan Spronk, Associate Professor, School of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa. Canada.

"Lopez offers a penetrating assessment of one of the most

confounding debates in public services today: corporatized utilities. Public Enterprises of Medellín (EPM) is widely considered to be the most successful publicly-owned utility in Latin America, but paradoxes abound. From widespread service cutoffs to the manic development of environmentally destructive infrastructure, EPM operates as a Janus-faced symbol of 'public', illustrating how marketized forms of corporatization can strip public utilities of their potential for equitable and sustainable forms of public services. But Lopez avoids simplistic conceptualizations, seeking to disrupt an often-polarized debate while introducing concrete suggestions for more democratic public reforms. Lessons for Colombia, and lessons for the world."
David McDonald, Director, Municipal Services Project, and Professor of Global Development Studies, Queen's University, Canada.

"Corporatization and the Right to Water in Colombia is fascinating detailed research that addresses how a state-owned company implements a complex relationship of infrastructures-citizenship based on the notion of water as public service for consumers. Marcela Lopez's book is a rigorous analysis from the perspective of political ecology of water that unveils how infrastructures supported by new technical-political processes, and ideals of environmental development and progress produce inequalities in access to water. But at the same time, it shows in a critical way the emergence of local struggles and daily practices over access to public water and demands of rights that allow reconfigurations of citizenship' rights. The book becomes an outstanding contribution that encourages us to rethink water as a common, and new insights to rights to water with urban contexts of inequality."
Astrid Ulloa, Professor of Geography, National University of Colombia