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Article
Publication date: 16 September 2021

Alejandra Duarte Vera, Julien Vanhulst and Eduardo Antonio Letelier Araya

Rural drinking water services in Chile are managed by Rural Drinking Water Associations (RDWAs) with a community governance model. However, urban growth and a neoliberal…

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Abstract

Purpose

Rural drinking water services in Chile are managed by Rural Drinking Water Associations (RDWAs) with a community governance model. However, urban growth and a neoliberal institutional setting tend to favor market-style governance, both in terms of territorial planning and drinking water supply, placing stress on the community governance model of RDWA. The authors seek to understand these processes and identify the position of RDWA actors facing socio-territorial and environmental transformations experienced in peri-urban sectors of the city of Talca (Chile).

Design/methodology/approach

The authors used georeferenced data, participant and non-participant observation and semi-structured interviews. With these data, the authors analyzed the positions and discourses of water governance actors in relation to socio-territorial transformations in the peri-urban areas of the city, as well as for tensions between community and market governance.

Findings

The authors identified a growth tendency of RDWA users around the city of Talca due to a sharp drinking water demand increase in peri-urban territories. As such, the authors describe and contrast RWDA managers and governmental regulators' discourses regarding environmental and socio-territorial transformations. In these discourses, the authors found three critical topics: (1) land liberalization blurring urban territory borders; (2) Law #20998, a poorly financed reform which raises the specter of RDWA privatization, jeopardizing historic community drinking water management; and (3) the consequences of declining community commitment to RDWAs.

Practical implications

One key implication of these findings is the need to modify RDWA pricing policies to deal with new rural inhabitant lifestyles and drinking water demands and to fulfill water basic needs of rural families, avoiding privatization risks. This change could help not only dealing with growing scarcity during global climate change, but could also provide financial resources to face new technical and administrative requirements of SSR Law.

Originality/value

The originality of the study comes from using a framework of governance tensions applied to water governance in peri-urban areas in a neoliberal institutional setting.

Details

International Journal of Social Economics, vol. 49 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0306-8293

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Article
Publication date: 29 October 2019

Beatriz Cid, Eduardo Antonio Letelier Araya, Pablo Saravia, Julien Vanhulst, Nelson Carroza and Daniel Sandoval

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the social economy discourses in four regions of Chile, characterized by their internal economic heterogeneity.

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the social economy discourses in four regions of Chile, characterized by their internal economic heterogeneity.

Design/methodology/approach

Using an intentional sample, semi-structured interviews were applied to 45 key informants from the public sector, universities, consultant enterprises, cooperatives and civil society organizations. Through a content analysis, thematic axes were identified that allowed to characterize and to recognize the narratives that key informants held about their initiatives, experiences or ventures.

Findings

The results allow us to understand the diversity of discourses and practices about alternative economies, being able to organize them from two axes: the tension between molar and molecular subjectivities; and the tension between reform and transformation (which refers to a transformative type of institutional and socio-material change). These axes propose an interpretative framework that integrates a diversity of distinctions and/or polarities and problematizes the homogeneity of formal economic discourse.

Research limitations/implications

The discourses analyzed by this paper offers representativeness by saturation. It do not allow to ponder for sure the relative presence of each of these discourses in the field of economic diversity. The analysis of what type of actors sustain each type of discourse remains pending.

Social implications

The high discourse heterogeneity makes it possible to foresee major difficulties in terms of political articulation and the visibility of various alternative economic experiences, initiatives or ventures as part of a social transformation movement.

Originality/value

Previous studies developed in Latin America about social and solidarity economy have been focused in objective dimensions as the volume of incomes, expenditures or jobs. This is the first study aimed at characterizing the subjective field of discourse held by different actors who recognize themselves as part of an alternative economy movement.

Details

International Journal of Social Economics, vol. 47 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0306-8293

Keywords

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