ABSTRACT
Most social science researches on water begin by asserting its character as a resource that is indispensable to life. But, while water is a resource that has all the appearances of being natural and, therefore, resistant to sociological analysis, the fact that distribution networks have existed since ancient times (Annales, 2002; Scarborough et al., 2003), and that, since the nineteenth century, such networks have played a vital role in the development of cities, means that water is even more likely to be taken for granted (Tarr and Konvitz, 1987; Tarr, 1989). In fact, like gas, electricity, transport and telecommunications, the water distribution and sanitation service is a sociotechnical system that has become indispensable to the inhabitants of cities and large metropolises. Considering this sector as a technical system among others enables one to move beyond sector-based interpretations to which both the academic world and professional milieux tend to subscribe, thereby constituting a veritable “water community” (Meublat, 2001) with its reviews, its conferences, its international organizations and its national agencies. In effect, the water sector generates a vast field of applied research in which public institutions, the R&D departments of private corporations and consulting firms are all involved – exchanging ideas, good practices and evaluations. These studies on the water sector over several decades have been conducted to elaborate a doxa that contributes to the development of both consensus among professionals and public opinion that finally influences the choice of political decision-makers (Payen, 2013: 119). In regard to developing countries, one of the most accepted ideas of this doxa is that water management is too costly for poor populations which, by definition, have low incomes. But convergent studies conducted in countries of the “South” show that the cost of water for poor populations with no access to the public service (and who are forced to purchase water in bottles or water tanks, or to finance their own rainwater storage equipment) is higher than for people who are connected to it (Zérah, 2000; Brook and Irwin, 2003; Harris, 2003: 27; Jaglin, 2005; Franceys and Gerlach, 2008). Furthermore, it is considered that operating a network in a sector characterized by a low level of profitability,2 without substantial public investment, notably in terms of infrastructure in the poorest neighbourhoods, may appear to be an arduous undertaking. Nevertheless, the comparison with – among other technical systems – cellphone networks, which have developed very rapidly over the course of the past 15 years, seems to suggest that, even in the absence of public subsidies, poor populations have the means to pay for services
adapted to their financial circumstances. This is one of the paradoxes inherent in political approaches to urban services. As recently demonstrated in Bolivia, users can prefer approaches that focus on delivering improved conditions of access rather than a free service (Poupeau, 2011b). The key question is not only one of cost; it is also the service which is provided to people as well as their desire to have it, and behind that the allocation of revenue among different forms of consumption. Another characteristic of this doxa is its focus on the public or private status of the operator. This feature has been particularly evident since the 1990s when the generalization of the universal service model achieved international recognition. During this period many contracts were signed but numerous ones were characterized by disputes over the contracting-out of the service (Guasch, 2004) in cities including, but not limited to, Buenos Aires, Berlin, Cochabamba, Le Paz-El Alto and Soweto. By 2010, private water companies had withdrawn from many developing countries. Nevertheless, in these problematic cases the number of connections generally increased (Marin, 2009), whereas many cases of remunicipalization failed to produce the kinds of economic and social results that had originally been hoped for. Cochabamba, emblematic of the “Water Wars” of the early 2000s, provides us with a stark example. Another commonly shared idea is that providing the poorest populations with access to basic services depends on the promotion of a “right to water” (Bakker, 2010). Of course, this right may be used to support a “communitarian management” structure capable of taking into account criteria of justice and democratic participation. But, at the same time, while asserting a principle, it does not guarantee an improvement in the service. In certain contexts, its application, which is by no means guaranteed, can lead to stocks of the resource being exhausted. Similarly, the notion according to which a call for consumers or stakeholders to take part in the process would be sufficient to render the services more efficient is far from having been validated. Above all, the concept of the “right to water” does not tell us whether a universal extension of services is the only way forward, the most suitable approach to confronting the issues of urban sprawl and the growing scarcity of natural resources characteristic of regions marked by “water stress”, including the Amer ican West, the high plateaux of the Andes, the Sertão in Brazil, North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, southern India, central Asia and northern China. This water technical system is embedded in the materiality of social life as well as locality; this system possesses a morphology and a series of properties (availability of resources, rainfall, relief, ecosystems) from which both economic (fixed assets) and legal data (contracts) may be derived. It is characterized as well by an institutional framework that makes it possible to manage the water system in a given territory marked by a particular history and occupied by social groups with their specific interests and conflicts of interest. These are the factors on which we have based our hypothesis, choosing to
focus on what protagonists actually do, rather than on the public or private status of the operator.
