ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the political ecology of the drought that hit Athens between 1989 and 1991. Firstly, the chapter explores the process though which nature became discursively constructed as a source of crisis during the drought period. Secondly, it examines how this particular discursive production of nature became central in building social consensus around a number of “emergency measures”. The analysis interprets the drought as the “ferment” that expedited a set of politicaleconomic transformations that expanded both the capital base (in the direction of liberalization of water management) and the resource base (with the construction of a new dam project).
