Countering Social Conflict: Strategies of Companies and the State in the North-Chilean Water Conflicts

• In Event: Understanding Global Inequalities through Local Arenas of Negotiation: The Contentious Politics of Nature

Abstract

In the last years, throughout Latin America extractive projects have incited social mobilizations and conflicts of varying intensity and duration. Local communities as well as regional and national social organizations have challenged unilateral decisions by states and companies involved in such projects. Subsequently, states and companies reacted to these challenges with different strategies and tactics: from open repression against challenging groups to preemptive concessions to affected people or groups in order to secure their consent or at least their quiescence. While research on the ‘mobilization side’ of such conflicts is currently vibrant, much less investigation takes place with regard to the strategies and tactics used in order to tame or preempt contention in the context of extractive projects. My paper wants to address this blindspot by investigating the water conflicts in the Northern Chilean Copiapó valley. The region is one of the driest in the word with a rapidly growing, water intensive mining sector that led to water scarcity and caused social conflict in many parts of the valley. My aim is to explore how mining companies and state actors reacted to these conflicts in order to calm them or, in some cases, to prevent them. I will also assess the wider outcomes of the episodes of contention and negotiation, particularly with regard to their effects on social inequalities.

Author

• Bettina M Schorr, Freie Universität Berlin