Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South African waterscape

8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric

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Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: of fering a

third way of analysis into the (co)production of the

South African waterscape

Suraya Fazel-Ellahi

PhD Student

Department of Geography

University of Manchester, UK


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Table of Contents

1.0. Water scarcity and the privatisation debate ............................................................ 4

1.1. A brief historical tracing of the contested emergence of the South African

waterscape .................................................................................................................. 81.1.1. Encircling the privatisation debate in the contemporary waterscape ......... 10

1.2. An exercise in re-envisioning: Moving toward a third way of analysis ........... 14

2.0. Re-inserting the political into examining Socio-Natural relations ....................... 16

2.1. Marxist Historical Materialism as a Relational Ontology ................................ 18

2.1.1. The Basic Tenets of Relational Marxism ................................................... 18

2.1.2. Advances in Relational Marxism ............................................................... 20

2.1.3. The Influence of Marxs Dialectical Method on this Relational Branch of

Historical Materialism ......................................................................................... 21

2.2. Urban Political Ecology as rooted in a Marxist Relational Ontology .............. 23

2.2.1. Central Contributions of Urban Political Ecology ..................................... 24

2.3. Challenges to Historical Materialist Analysis................................................... 272.3.1. Moving beyond Anthropocentricism ......................................................... 27

2.3.2. Economic determinism in conceptualising power relations and change ... 28

2.3.3. The relational sufficiency of the Dialectic ................................................. 29

3.0. Mobilising an ethnography of actor relations and power to make sense of South

African water flow ....................................................................................................... 29


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Abstract

In light of what is understood as a stalemate in the privatisation debate framing water

delivery, this paper suggests a third way of analysis to make sense of the co-

production of the South African waterscape. This third way draws on urban political

ecology, with the roots of the project traced to a relational ontology, predominantly a

relational Marxism. This approach is concerned with shifting the focus into the

domain of the proper political, by challenging a dualistic conception of society

nature relations and re-inserting the political into analysis of these relations, as they

unfold within contemporary capitalist society. It is argued that in adopting this third

way of analysis it will be possible to escape the narrow confines of the privatisation

debate, by focusing instead on how the material flow of water is determined by more

than the hydrological cycle, but also directed by wider practices, institutions (public,

private or a hybridised form) and unfolding political processes, consequently bringing

into question naturalised understandings of water access, scarcity, and pollution as

dimensions of the water crisis. Instead, such a framework, points to the necessity of

excavating the power geometries in the underlying processes which shape the

emergent waterscape (irrespective of whether the actors are public or private). Such

an analysis also provides a means to move beyond apolitical and a-historical

representations of the problem and to conceive of alternatives beyond technical and

managerial fixes.


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1.0. Water scarcity and the privatisation debate

The collective consciousness of the spectre of global environmental threats has

reached a historically unprecedented scale, assuming an increased urgency within

public discourse as well as in political debate, and framed as a global ecological crisis.

These ecological crises evidenced in desertification, global climate change,

deforestation, water scarcity, pollution and natural disasters, including extreme

weather events such as floods, tsunamis and droughts - are increasingly represented as

commonly shared threats that need to be overcome through the actions of a collective

humanity. This framing of the problem as contained in an objectified form serves to

shift the focus toward addressing the Thing in itself, with the answer to be found in

institutional, managerial and technological fixes (Murray, 2009; Swyngedouw, 2010).

In the case of water, the United Nations third World Water Development Report

(2009) describes the crisis as regional water management crises which are emerging

in most parts of the world in divergent forms, as water shortages and droughts,

floods or both, now aggravated by the consequences of climate change (World Water

Development Report, 2009:13). The crisis can broadly be understood as a scarcity in

relation to demand and the degradation/pollution of global water resources (Bakker,

2010; World Water Development Report, 2009). According to the United Nations an

estimated 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water and a total of more

than 2.6 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation. Every year in

developing countries an estimated 3 million people die prematurely from water-

related diseases. The largest proportion of these deaths are among infants and young

children, followed by women, from poor rural families who lack access to safe waterand improved sanitation. (United Nations, 2010). These figures on the state of the

world water crisis and its consequences, point to the urgency of solutions to address

experiences of material water scarcity.

In response, the predominant solutions have encircled transformations in water

governance agents, practices and instruments. In particular, beginning in earnest since

the 1980s, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund have actively supported

the enrolment of the private sector in the provision of water supply services in low


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and middle income countries. This advocacy of the private sector has been reinforced

firstly through pointing to the failure of governments and aid agencies to achieve

universal water supply (Swyngedouw, 2003; Bakker, 2007); and secondly through a

naturalisation and celebration of market forces and private ownership (Swyngedouw,

2003). Within this context, some of the water corporations emerged among the

worlds largest multinationals, epitomising the rapid growth of private, for-profit

activity in sectors previously dominated by governments (Bakker, 2010:214).

However the advocacy of the private sector in water provision has not gone

unchallenged and in the last decades has engendered an increasingly polarised

privatisation debate, pivoting on the role of the state and private companies as owners,

managers and providers of water supply services, and framed within a discourse of

water scarcity and degradation. On the one hand, proponents of privatisation, argue

that the market is the panacea for social and ecological crisis, including the problems

of the water sector, which cannot be addressed by the inadequate and inefficient

practices of the state. On the other hand, opponents of this position, reject any role for

the private sector in the provision of water supply services, arguing instead that the

rhetoric of management efficiency and water conservation through the treatment of

water as an economic good, are an elaborate ruse for the theft of water from the public

domain, for the generation of profit. In this case the state has been promoted as the

preferable agent of delivery. However, it is argued that a framing of the debate, which

represents the public and private sectors as opposing agents of delivery, is narrowly

conceived and functions to contain the envisaged solutions by limiting the framing of

the problem and consequently silencing the potential for real transformative

alternatives. This argument is supported by a deeper reading of state and private

sector roles and relations as follows.

Firstly both the public and private sectors have not succeeded in adequately

addressing environmental concerns and have systematically failed to extend water

supply networks to the urban and rural poor. Secondly although the two sectors differ

in key respects, they also share significant overlaps in the water supply approach,

defining water as a resource, to be put to instrumental use by humans, via

centralised, standardised hydraulic technology, in a drive for maximisation (whether

of water supply or profits), on the basis of a hierarchical management structure


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predicated on technical expertise, which creates an atomised relationship between

individual users and the network (Bakker, 2010:216). Thirdly, following the initial

increase in water privatisation, the last few years has in fact witnessed a retreat by

capital, as it has encountered difficulties in profiting from privatization, particularly

within the global South where contracts commit companies to high levels of long-

term investment in fixed infrastructure while many of these investments are to be

made in areas where the majority of the population subsist on incredibly low

incomes (Loftus, 2009:957). As a result contracts have been renegotiated soon after

they have been signed, many of the high profile contracts of the 1990s have now been

abandoned, and the state and other forms of institutional organizations have been

drawn back in to water governance. (Loftus, 2009:957). Therefore, within this

context, the water sector has witnessed the apparent reinsertion of the public sector,

prompting analysts to argue that one of the central myths concerning the advancement

of market principles is the notion that it should necessarily be accompanied by the

rolling back of state regulation (Swyngedouw, 2005: 89). In contrast, state

involvement is central and essential in establishing a suitable regulatory environment,

and supporting market principles in water delivery (Swyngedouw, 2005). This insight

into the relations between the public and private sector has lead analysts to refer to the

transformation of the sector, rather than its privatization (Bakker, 2003).

In light of the emergent stalemate in the public versus private debate, alternatives to

these models have also been put forward, firstly through arguing for the treatment of

water as a human right and secondly through locating water management within the

commons1 (Bakker, 2010). Beginning with the latter argument, the commons has

emerged as a widely debated proposal to reforming property rights as a solution to the

water crisis. While, this debate is in itself internally divided, and will not be unpacked

here, what is significant is that it promotes a vision of water governance which

involves cooperative community management, as an effective challenge to both the

state and the private sector. While this vision represents a significant effort to move

beyond the narrow confines of the privatisation debate, a central identified problem

with this approach is that it imagines a utopian co-operative community and

abandons the state as an instrument in encouraging redistributive models of resource

1With the activist form of common management understood as an inclusive mode of collective

stewardship of shared resources (as one form of commons management)


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management, progressive social relations, and environmental protection (Bakker,

2010: 221).

The second argument, concerned with promoting water as a human-right (Bond

2003a; Bond and Dugard, 2008; Bakker, 2010) has been mobilised as a major counter

to water privatisation. Proponents argue that access to water is a material emblem of

citizenship, a material symbol of inclusion (Murray, 2009; Bakker, 2010) and have

campaigned extensively for the realisation of this right. Significantly, on July 28

2010, the United Nations General Assembly declared that safe and clean drinking

water and sanitation is a "human right that is essential for the full enjoyment of life

and all human rights. The resolution is the first time that water has ever been fully

recognized as a human right on a global stage, and has been celebrated as a victory for

civil. However this declaration is apparently contradicted by the Dublin Principles of

the United Nations International Conference of Water and the Environment held in

1992. The fourth Dublin Principle states that water has an economic value in all its

competing uses and should be recognized as an economic good. It is the co-existence

of such tensions that has lead analysts to question the capacity of the rights based

discourse to serve as an effective counter to privatisation and to move the debate

forward beyond the current identified constraints. It is significant, that despite the

progressive notions, upon greater scrutiny the human rights approach emerges as

limited in its capacity to effectively and fundamentally transform inequality in water

distribution. This is because firstly the human right to water does not foreclose private

property rights, secondly rights do not guarantee sufficient access as the

legal/institutional framework can be constructed in a way that further restricts

citizenship and inclusion, finally the framework is limiting in focusing on the right to

drinking water as opposed to wider aspects of water resources, land and integrated

ecological challenges.

In what follows, to illustrate how the contradictions and constraints of the

privatisation debate, as outlined above, have assumed a real world, particular and

contentious form the case of contemporary South Africa will be presented. Thereafter

we will move to consider a third way of analysis which offers a route to move

beyond the privatisation debate. It is suggested that urban political ecology (UPE)

offers a means through which to make sense of the South African waterscape. An


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outlining of UPE will begin with a tracing of the theoretical roots of this project,

understood to be guided by a relational ontology. In the final section, we will return to

the case of water in South Africa reflecting on the capacity of the framework to

unlock the analytical limitations of the privatisation debate, offering an alternative

lens to examining the politics of water flow in South Africa. In other words this

section will consider the capacity of the framework to enable a reading of the

waterscape as a co-constructed environment, emerging through specific historical

geographical power struggles, as essentially political processes and outcomes, as

opposed to natural.Secondly the paper will consider how insights emerging throughempirical studies of the South African waterscape can be employed in renovating and

reviving aspects of a relational ontology and political ecology. The aim of the paper is

to suggest a route through which to re-envision, re-problematise, and re-politicise the

water crisis so as to move closer to conceiving of solutions which can bring about real

change.

1.1. A brief histor ical tracing of the contested emergence ofthe South African waterscape

As early as 1652, influenced by Dutch Law, the Dutch Company declared water a

public good, giving the State the overall right to control the use of public water.

However, this principle was replaced in the early 19thcentury through the introduction

of the English riparian doctrine, thereby permitting the property owners the right to

access and to make reasonable use of water from the river adjoining their property. It

was only with the apartheid regime that the Afrikaner government challenged the

English riparian doctrine and shifted the balance back toward state management of

public water, through the Water Act of 1956, vesting in the Minister of the newly

formed Department of Water Affairs a large measure of control over water affairs.

The Water Act of 1956 was significant on two counts regarding its influence on the

materialised water environment. Firstly, while it (re)introduced the principle of

government control over public water, the Act prioritised the interests of the

commercial agricultural sector, mandating the Department of Water Affairs (DWA) to

allocate water specifically for the development of the sector. This prioritisation waslargely a political strategy, as a substantial percentage of the ruling National Partys


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(NPs) support base were commercial farmers. Despite this degree of bias, the

prevailing concern was with harmonising water regulations with the interests of all the

economic heavyweights, including agriculture, mining and industry (Tewari,

2005:442). In recognising the role of the 1956 Act in codifying this effort, it is

noteworthy that the alliance between State and commercial interests in informing

water allocation had developed at a much earlier period in South African history.

Most notably at the time of the discovery of gold in 1886 which led to the settlement

of a large number of prospectors in the mining town of Johannesburg. This then lead

to the establishment of the Rand Water Board in 1903 to satisfy demand for water

supply and sanitation services in the greater Witwatersrand area (a low mountain

range near Johannesburg), with the consequent legislation granting preferential water

rights to mining operations (Funke at al., 2007; Turton et al., 2006).

The second point of influence of the 1956 Act, while shifting the balance back toward

state management of public water, was the prioritisation of water provision to white

South Africans. Within this Act white South Africans received near universal access

to water and sanitation while non whites were deprived of these services. However,

as with water provision to the commercial sector, this emphasis reflected a historical

continuity in that the earlier riparian rights system, coupled with widespread colonial

land accumulation, had already resulted in the production of inequitable resource

access. However the apartheid government was notable for its explicit codification of

racial segregation, extending into all apartheid era public service provision. Therefore

the 1956 Act was part of the apartheid architecture supporting the development of

racial enclaves defined by connection and disconnection to housing, electricity,

public transport, employment opportunities and social welfare support.

The apartheid policy of segregation also meant that municipalities (white local

authorities) were initially established in designated white areas, and only in 1982

were Black Local Authorities (BLAs) introduced to manage service provision in

Black urban townships. However, the BLAs had a limited tax base and virtually no

powers and capacity to execute their mandate (Van Donk and Pieterse, 2006:108),

leading to rent and service rate increases as their only source of revenue. It was the

lack of urban services and increased rent and service rates that sparked township

mobilisation and resistance, with strategies ranging from rent to consumer boycotts


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and attacks on symbols of the apartheid system. These uprisings, initially repressed,

spread to a national level by the 1990s (Van Donk and Pieterse, 2006:109), taking

hold in the urban centres of South Africa, and has been widely acknowledged as a

central force in undermining the apartheid machinery.

1.1.1. Encircling the privatisation debate in the contemporarywaterscape

With service provision functioning historically both as an instrument in producing

racial and material inequity and relationally as a central catalyst for resistance, the

post apartheid state was faced the challenge of extending service provision to all

South Africans as a part of achieving social equity and stability. In this regard, the

infrastructural developments achieved have been widely praised. At the end of

apartheid 12 million South Africans were without access to clean water and 21

million with inadequate access (Hagg & Emmett, 2003: 67; Kasrils, 2004; DWAF,

2005)2. The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF)3has since achieved

some notable successes. It is estimated that around 90% of South Africans now have

access to a source of clean water, while the remaining 10% continues to access water

from unsafe sources, such as streams, dams or wells (Butler, 2009). While theprogress reflected in these figures is significant, the actual degree to which they have

resulted in materially consequential transformations has been widely debated. Firstly,

regarding the actual credibility of the delivery figures and the sustainability of the

community water supply schemes, DWAF have been criticised for inflating

delivery figures and underplaying the lack of sustainability of community water

supply schemes (Hagg & Emmett, 2003). Accusations have been made that a large

percentage of these schemes deliver irregularly or have dried up completely4.

However these accusations are difficult to verify as there is insufficient reliable

information on these schemes (Hagg & Emmett, 2003). Secondly the statistics on

access to water and sanitation services conceal the differences in the form of access

which cut across class, race, gender and geographical boundaries. A third fundamental

2With over 14, 000 rural households dependent on rudimentary water sources such as rivers, wells and

boreholes (Hagg & Emmett, 2003: 69).3Renamed the Department of Water Affairs in 2009

4

Wellman (1999) argued that over 50 per cent of the schemes were functioning inadequately, Hemson(2001) referred to a success rate of 33 per cent at RDP level, and Greenberg (2001) cited what he

regarded as being misleading numbers provided by DWAF (Hagg & Emmett, 2003: 73).


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challenge is the issue of affordability, as infrastructure alone does not guarantee

access to water (Fil-Flynn, 2001; McDonald & Pape, 2002; Xali, 2002; Hagg &

Emmett, 2003).

These tensions in infrastructure developments also appear in the contemporary water

legislation, which emerges as something of a legislative hybrid concerned with

achieving a universal basic supply, resource protection, and economic efficiency. The

main water laws are the Water Services Act of 1997 and the National Water Act of

19985 which identify the government as the entity responsible for the sustainable

management of water resources for the benefit of all in accordance with the

constitution6. Emphasising water as a scarce resource, the water laws reflect an effort

to simultaneously treat water as a public good and to assign a commercial value to

water (Tewari, 2005:442), holding that efficient allocation can only be achieved

though market forces and true scarcities of water can only be reflected by price

(Tewari, 2005: 444). In this sense, the water crisis in South Africa is being framed as

a problem of impending water scarcity to be overcome by water pricing and building

adaptive capacity. The payment for water services is supported by the claim that

equitable allocation necessitates the economic valuation of a scarce resource. This

perspective is illustrated in water related policy documents in all three spheres of

government (national, provincial and local) and is supported in the environment

literature examining the question of water and climate change adaptation (Ziervogel et

al., 2010). In presenting the problem as water scarcity/insecurity, solutions are

increasingly being presented in the form of institutional, managerial and technological

solutions (Ziervogel et al., 2010:95). Most notably water management has emerged as

a blend of demand side management and conservation, and augmentation strategies

(Tewari, 2005:444). This concern with water reconciliation identified as the

necessary solution to the threat of scarcity is materialised in a number of practices

including water leaks projects and the use of water demand management devices to

control water use accompanied by costly large bulk infrastructure projects to ensure

supply meets anticipated demand. The above dimensions of the water laws have

5Tewari, 2005; Funke at al., 2007; Brown, 2010; Ziervogel et al., 2010; Herrfahrdt-Paehle, 2010

6However the Water Services Act and National Water Act have established a dual structure of water

management and governance, with the responsibilities for drinking water supply and sanitation vestedwith the local government, while the management, protection and use of the water resources are the

domain of the national government (DWA) (Herrfahrdt-Paehle, 2010).


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generated a number of political fault lines, linked efforts to mediate these both

materially and discursively, and engendered a debate concerned with the privatisation

of the South African waterscape and its consequences in a highly unequal society.

These will be briefly sketched before moving to consider the capacity of a third way

of analysis, as a relational framework to support an examination of the production of

the South African waterscape, which moves beyond the confines of the privatisation

debate.

Firstly, post apartheid South African water politics has mirrored trends, especially in

the global South, with the development of public-private partnerships and the

increased promotion of water privatisation. However, the last few years have

witnessed a retreat by capital as it has encountered difficulties in profiting from water

concessions. Despite this, the focus of the South African public sector has remained

on economic efficiency in water delivery, thereby supporting arguments that one of

the central myths concerning the advancement of market principles is the notion that

it should necessarily be accompanied by the rolling back of state regulation (Bakker,

2010; Loftus, 2005). Secondly, a linked instrument in the treatment of water as an

economic good in South Africa is the principle of Cost-recovery. This principle has

emerged as central within South African water delivery and has been widely debated

(McDonald & Pape, 2002; Naidoo, 2005; Coalition against water privatisation, 2003,

2006; Cottle & Deedat, 2003; Oldfield & Peters, 2005; Loftus, 2005, Koelble et al,

2010). Cost-recovery is supported by a view that resources such as water are scarce

and require control over their distribution with a pricing mechanism as the best

instrument to achieving this. The suggestion then is that improved fiscal and

managerial controls are necessary to solving the crisis of service delivery within

South Africa. Furthermore the predominant view within the DWAF was that the rates

boycotts of the 1980s lead to a sense of entitlement resulting in a culture of non-

payment.

However critics contend that promotion of cost recovery as a necessary solution to

municipal budget constraints and resource conservation (Koelble et al, 2010:565),

sidesteps the fundamental challenges of unemployment and its relationship to

inequality and an inability to pay for services. A number of empirical studies carried

out over the last 10 years in South Africa have shown that non-payment is actually


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related to the affordability issues, high rates of unemployment and service quality

(McDonald & Pape, 2002, Xali, 2002, Cottle & Deedat, 2003; Oldfield & Peters,

2005). Faced with growing criticism, full cost recovery7practiced in the 1990s, has

since been adapted with the introduction of Free Basic Water (FBW)8, in October

2000. This most notably followed a severe cholera epidemic in several provinces and

cities in the same year, the worst in South Africas history, which was linked by many

to the policy of full cost recovery (Cottle & Deedat, 2003; Budds & McGranahan,

2003). Free Basic Water (FBW) can therefore be understood as a mechanism adopted

to mediate the materialised fault lines of the waterscape. Studies critically examining

FBW have written of the paradox of FBW and Cost Recovery showing its effect in

increasing household debt and municipal financial loss (Oldfield & Peters, 2005), and

referring to FBW as the Free Basic Commodity (Loftus, 2005). Drawing on an

empirical study in Durban, Loftus shows the paradox presented through the offer of

Free Basic Water which, intended to be a universal minimal quantity of water

available to all, became the maximum accessed by many of the Citys poor.

Furthermore, while the effect of FBW has been to prevent complete disconnection for

non payment, this practice has been replaced by the use of crude technologies directed

at restricting water access to the Free Basic Water quantity (Peters & Oldfield, 2005;

Loftus, 2005; Schnitzler, 2008). In a study tracing the history of pre-payment

technology in South Africa from its initial development as a depoliticising device in

the context of the rent boycotts to its contemporary use - alongside the water restrictor

and flow limiter in the context of cost recovery and neoliberal reforms, Schnitzler

(2008) argues that the history of the technology becomes inscribed within it and the

meter has been re-rationalised as an instrument aiding residents to calculate and

economise their water consumption consequently creating spaces of calculability,

forcing especially poor Soweto residents to subject their daily consumption patterns to

metrological scrutiny (Schnitzler, 2008).

7The concept of Cost Recovery is defined as the recovery of all, or most, of the cost associated with

providing a particular service by a service provider (McDonald, 2004: 18). Cost recovery defines water

users as consumers; and commits them to contributing to at least the operation and maintenance costs

of delivery (McDonald & Pape, 2002; Smith, 2002; Hagg & Emmett, 2003; Ruiters & McDonald,

2005).

8A lifeline amount of 6 kilolitres per household per month


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The Bio-politics and Techno-politics operating along the fault lines of the

contemporary South African waterscape, treating water as a public and economic

good, surfaced notably in the case of the residents of Phiri, Soweto versusJohannesburg Water. The case was brought to the Johannesburg High Court in 2006

by five female residents of Phiri, supported by the Coalition Against Water

Privatisation. All five of the applicants, together with their neighbours had their water

cut off, or were persuaded into accepting a pre-paid meter. The Phiri Residents argued

that the South African Constitution guarantees their right to water and obliges the

state to achieve the progressive realisation of each of these rights (Republic of

South Africa, 1996). This rights based discourse has been mobilised by left

academics, social movements and the urban poor alike as an ideological and strategic

counter to the treatment of water as an economic good. In April 2008, the High Court

ruled in favour of the Phiri applicants concluding that pre-paid meters were

unconstitutional and unlawful, and the city should provide residents with fifty litres of

water per person per day (above the allocated FBW quota of 25 litres per person per

day). However, this victory was short-lived as Johannesburg Water immediately

appealed the decision, and the Supreme Court overturned the High Courts decision in

2009, ruling that prepaid meters were not unconstitutional and that a basic quantity of

40 litres per person per day was sufficient. Finally on appeal the Constitutional Court

upheld the Supreme Courts ruling in favour of Johannesburg Water. The case is a

powerful illustration of the false antithesis between market principles and the stated

goal of human rights, and the ways in which tensions between these principles are

mediated.

1.2. An exercise in re-envisioning: Moving toward a third wayof analysis

Having briefly the presented the case of South Africa and the ways in which the

privatisation debate has shaped and been shaped by the particularities of the South

African context, I wish to suggest that if the goal is to contribute to real change what

is needed is an analytical movement that engages in a re-envisioning, and stepsoutside of the confines constructed by the privatisation debate. The aim should


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therefore be to move beyond the question of the degree to which South African water

policy and practice is reflective of privatisation, and refuse to be drawn into

technical debates concerned with for example the sufficient quantity of FBW, as the

goal in itself. While significant for short-term amelioration of stark inequality,

focusing efforts at this level is at risk of contributing to a disguising of the proper

political dimensions, relations and processes which are engaged in directing South

African water flows. Therefore, the approach being proposed here aims to bring into

question the largely un-questioned acceptance of a naturalised water scarcity, and the

related mobilisation of technical and managerial fixes.

It is suggested that the work being carried out especially within political ecology

offers such a framework, understood as a third way of analysis concerned with

shifting the focus into examining the domain of the properly political. In expanding

their understanding of water as circulating through the material as well as social and

political spheres, political ecologists have coined the term hydro-social cycle. This

expanded understanding of waters circulation allows for a recognition that the

material flow of water is determined by more than the hydrological cycle, but also

directed by wider practices, institutions and unfolding political processes,

consequently bringing into question naturalised understandings of water access,

scarcity, and pollution as dimensions of the water crisis. Instead, such a framework,

points to the necessity of excavating the underlying processes and power geometries

which shape the emergent waterscape and relationally presents a challenge to an

unquestioned acceptance of dominant modes of problematisation. It is suggested then

that the value of such an analysis is to move beyond apolitical and a-historical

representations of the problem, pointing instead to the processes of co-production of

observed environments, consequently opening up pathways to conceive of alternatives

beyond technical and managerial fixes. The potential of political ecology, and in

particular urban political ecology, to offer an advanced relational approach to

examining the power and politics of socio-nature within capitalism will be considered

below. This discussion is also concerned with a tracing of the theoretical roots of

urban political ecology, understood to be predominantly a relational Marxism, with

elements of New Materialism.


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2.0. Re-inserting the poli tical into examining Socio-Natural relations

As suggested at the start of this paper, global environmental threats have assumed an

increased urgency within public discourse as well as in political debate, with the

challenges framed as a global ecological crisis. These ecological crises including

water degradation and deforestation - are represented as externalised and commonly

shared threats that need to be overcome through the actions of a collective humanity,

with solutions located within the domain of technical and managerial reconfigurations

and transformations. Proponents of these fixes are guided by a dominanteconomistic understanding of human environment relations, which represents nature

as out there, an external threat to be addressed. The approach acknowledges the

spectre of ecological crisis, and environmental economists have also come to

acknowledge that economic growth has generated environmental problems; however

it is argued that the solution to the problem should be found within capitalism. In

particular the approach represents nature either as an obstacle to be overcome or a

source to fuel industrial society. The central argument is that the only route out of the

ecological crisis is to travel deeper into capitalist processes, advocating ecological

modernisation9as the panacea. Hence the particular form of modernisation embraced

is not a radical break with the current economic system and institutions. Rather the

forces of modernisation that are believed to lead human society from its past of

environmental degradation and exploitation to environmental sustainability are the

institutions of modernity, including the market, industrialism and technology (Foster

et al, 2010: 253-254). This logic is evident in the framing of the debate around water

privatisation, as outlined above, and evident in the South African case with the

emphasis on water pricing and market mechanisms as central elements within water

management policy.

However a challenge to this market environmentalist logic has been put forward by

critical theorists wanting to advance a relational conception of society nature relations

9This market driven approach to correcting contemporary socio-ecological crisis has been variously

described as green capitalism, ecological modernisation, and market environmentalism.


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within contemporary capitalist society. These theorists have argued that the

representation of nature as external to society and a-historical, by proponents of

market environmentalism, is central in supporting a de-politicisation of society nature

relations and emergent socio-ecological conditions. In other words, it is argued that

the representation of nature as simultaneously universal and external, functions as an

act of ideological colonisation, which serves to silence the political dimensions of

socio-natural processes and products. This exercise in de-politicisation is understood

as a necessary precondition for enabling a promotion of market based institutional

transformations as the optimum solution to socio-ecological crisis. In sum, this

critique of market environmentalism points to a paradoxical treatment of the

environment; where environmental issues are placed firmly on the political agenda, as

is the case with water scarcity, while simultaneously being suspended outside of the

proper political through its representation as a-historical and external.

As a counter to the externalised and universal treatment of nature, understood as

ideologies of nature10critical social theorists have advanced the development of a

relational ontology on socio-nature enabling a reflection on the relational processes of

socio-natural assembly, and the conditions that these generate, and consequently

aiming to debase the ideological and depoliticised treatment of the concept of

nature.

The next section reviews the attempts made at moving toward re-conceptualising

socio natural relations, as a route to re-problematising the contemporary socio

ecological conditions and challenges we face. Anchored in the work of relational

Marxists (with urban political ecology understood as rooted within this framework),

the review proceeds as follows: 1) Reviewing the relational Marxist project,

concerned with an understanding of socio-nature consistent with the tenets of

historical materialism. 2) This is followed by an engagement with the ideas of urban

political ecology, understood as predominantly rooted within this Marxist framework

of analysis. It is significant however, that while contributing to efforts to re-

conceptualise society nature relations, relational Marxism has not evaded critique.

10A representation which the ecological modernisation project has drawn on strongly, in the

contemporary context of socio-ecological crisis.


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The main points of critique have been made by alternative relational theses, working

outside of the Marxian tradition, most notably branches of new materialism. However

for the purposes of this paper the New Materialist challenge, overlaps with relational

Marxism and the points of contention will not be explored. However the main

critiques levelled at a relational Marxism will be acknowledged and reflected upon.

Following this review we are then better positioned to consider the capacity of a

relational Marxist framework, and urban political ecology as an offshoot and later

advancement, to offer a third way of analysis into understanding the making of the

South African waterscape.

2.1. Marxist Historical Materialism as a Relational Ontology

2.1.1. The Basic Tenets of Relational Marxism

Especially over the past 3 decades Human Geographers have debated explicitly

ontological questions about society nature relations. The most influential efforts to

move beyond the dualism came from Marxist geographers who sought to develop an

understanding of nature consistent with the tenets of historical materialism11.

Geographer Neil Smith (1984) argued that it was possible to identify within Marxs

writing a strong ontological challenge to a dualistic a-historical treatment of nature,

since he situated humans within nature as one of its constituent parts, and understood

nature as something produced rather than timeless and eternal. More specifically

Smith (1984) saw in Marx a dialectic between society and nature, understood as a

complex metabolic interaction, mobilised by the labour process. Marx utilised the

concept of metabolism to describe the human relation to nature through labour as

follows,

Labour is, first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man,

through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between

himself and nature. He confronts the materials of nature as a force of nature. He sets

11The term is generally used to refer to Marxs central project outlining a theory of capitalist society;

developed as a historical explanation of capitalist processes and relations, focusing on their material

basis.


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in motion the natural forces which belong to his own body, his arms, legs, head and

hands, in order to appropriate the materials of nature in a form adapted to his own

needs. Through this movement he acts upon external nature and changes it, and in

this way he simultaneously changes his own nature It [the labour process] is the

universal condition for the metabolic interaction [Stoffwechsel] between man and

nature, the everlasting nature imposed condition of human existence (Marx in

Foster, 2000: 157).

Drawing on this concept of metabolic interaction as denoting a dialectical and

historically material relation between society and nature Smith (1984) derived an

alternative conception of nature out of Marxs Ecology (Smith, 2010:31), proposing

the production of nature thesis. Smiths particular contribution was to push debate

forward by presenting an ontological challenge to politically paralysing beliefs in the

existence of a naturally pre-ordained state of things, which he termed the ideology of

nature. The production of nature thesis suggested that Nature did not exist a-

historically and instead that its history was being written.

In the development of his thesis Smith (1984) was particularly concerned with

advancing a theoretical basis with which to examine capitalist production as the force

governing contemporary socio natural relations. Smith (1984) argued that due to

primitive accumulation as the precondition of capitalist development, capitalism

differs from other exchange economies in that it produces on one side a class that

possesses the means of production, and yet do no labour, and on the other side a class

that possesses only their own labor power, which they must sell to survive.

Furthermore the relation to nature under capitalism is an exchange value relation

above all else, due to capitalisms basis in surplus accumulation (Smith, 1984; Smith

& OKeefe, 1980). In sum, Smith (1984) argued that capitalist production was

distinctive in that the transformative relation between society and nature was

governed centrally by the need to fulfil profit (Smith, 1984; Smith & OKeefe,

1980).

Departing from this thesis the questions that emerged related to how and why natures

are produced in the forms they are at any particular historical moment; and

relationally in the conception of alternatives how and by what social means and


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through what social institutions is the production of nature to be organised (Braun,

2009). However, despite the contributions recounted above, the thesis has been

critiqued for retaining a subject object dichotomy, consequently collapsing nature into

society and risking losing sight of the materiality of nature (Castree, 1995; Castree,

2002; Braun, 2009). Recent Marxist work has aimed to respond to this criticism by

recognising that capitalism produces natures, while still recognising the materiality

and agency of these produced natures. In particular Marxist geographers, have

engaged with and developed Smiths thesis to be reflective of a more relational

ontology. These developments will be outlined briefly below, before moving to

discussing urban political ecology in particular, as a developing sub-field within

political ecology, and also understood to be a contemporary offshoot within relational

Marxism.

2.1.2. Advances in Relational Marxism

Retaining the basic tenets of Smiths Production of Nature thesis, while aiming to

respond to some of the criticism levelled at the thesis, the continuing relational

Marxist project has aimed to build on understandings of capitalist metabolic relations,in a more relational form. Alongside the influence of Smith, Castree (2002) identifies

two figures that have been central in contributing to this project, namely David

Harvey and Erik Swyngedouw. A recent development in the relational examination of

capitalist society has been put forward by Harvey in his expansion of his dialectical

approach to include the environment as a constitutive moment within a larger

relational ontology12.

Other Marxist geographers working within this school include George Henderson,

Scott Prudham, Noel Castree, Karen Bakker, Gavin Bridge, James McCarthy, Becky

Mansfield, and Mathew Gandy. Their work has also contributed to understandings of

the agency of non human nature as both a potential problem and opportunity for

circuits of capital.

12

Within his dialectical approach Harvey (2009) recognises seven spheres of influence as follows;technology, relations to nature, mental conceptions, production, social relations, reproduction, and

institutional arrangements; and argues that these operate as internal relations within a larger totality.


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2.1.3. The Influence of Marxs Dialectical Method on this RelationalBranch of Historical Materialism

As already suggested, the conception centrally informing the reading of socio-nature

employed by relational Marxists is Marxs concept of metabolic exchange between

nature and society without which human beings could not exist and history could not

be made. This material relation was for Marx a dialectical one in that it was an

internal relation within a larger single totality. Therefore in conceiving of and dealing

with such a world - where each thing consists of the totality of its relations Marx

deemed the dialectical methods as the most appropriate tool as:

Dialectics restructures our thinking about reality by replacing the common-sense

notion of thing (as something that has a history and has external connections with

other things) with notions of process (which contains its history and possible

futures) and relation (which contains as part of what it is its ties with other

relations). (Ollman, 2003: 13)13

.

The dialectical method is mobilised within Marxism as a tool with which to

systematically study the complexity of the modern world as it evolves and changesover time. Focusing on processes of production, exchange, and distribution in the

capitalist era, it tries to account for the structure as well as the dynamics of the entire

social system, including both its origins and likely future. A central strength of the

dialectical mode is to challenge an externalised method of problematisation. This is to

say that while non-dialectical thought searches for an external cause to explain an

event or emergent problem, dialectical thought locates responsibility for change

within internal systemic relations.

13Bertell Ollman (2003) identifies two key elements to Marxs dialectic, the philosophy of internal

relations, and the process of abstraction. He contends that while the philosophy of internal relations

offers a method for inquiring into the world and organising and communicating what one finds, an

adequate grasp of this method requires that equal attention be paid to other elements of the dialectic,

and especially to the process of abstraction (Ollman, 2003: 5).


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Relational Marxists have been inspired by Marxs dialectical method14 in deriving

their ontology and consequent analytical concepts. Therefore in turning this dialectic

mode onto the contemporary capitalist era with the emergence of socio-ecological

crisis; relational Marxists argue for an understanding of these problems as internally

constituted, and therefore as emerging from the inner contradictions of the system.

Capitalisms fate, in other words, is sealed by its own problems, problems that are

internal manifestations of what it is and how it works and are often parts of the very

achievements of capitalism, worsening as these achievements grow and spread

(Ollman, 2003:18). It becomes evident, through this explication of the mode of

thought informing relational Marxism, how this approach serves as a challenge to the

narrow framing of the problem as externally constituted and requiring technical fixes

through moving deeper into capitalism. Instead, a relational Marxist approach,

drawing on a dialectical reading of metabolic relations, locates the problem internally,

consequently pointing to a re-conceptualisation of both the problems and possible

solutions.

In sum, for relational Marxists, influenced by a dialectical mode of thought, nature is

understood not as an external and universal entity that requires protection from people

or a domain to be dominated, but instead as part of a mutually constituted totality. As

explained by Swyngedouw, drawing on Levins and Lewontin,

the world is in a process of continuous becoming through the contingent and

heterogeneous recompositions of the almost infinite (socio)-ecological relations

through which new natures come into being see relations of parts to the whole and

the mutual interaction of parts in the whole as the process through which both

individuals and their environments are changed (see also Harvey, 1996). In other

words, both individuals and their environments are co-produced and co-evolve in

historically contingent, highly diversified, locally specific and often not fully

accountable manners (Swyngedouw, 2010:304).

14In particular the reading advanced by Bertell Ollman (Castree, 2002)


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2.2. Urban Political Ecology as rooted in a Marxist Relational

Ontology

Ideas emanating from the field of urban political ecology15 draw on the Marxian

understanding of socio-natural relations within capitalism. As such, the ontological

basis of this dialectical conception of society nature relations is largely traceable to a

relational Marxism. As an approach broadly concerned with the development of a

relational ontology it sees both society and nature as combined in historical

geographic production processes, perpetually producing new environments and new

natures.

Following the ontology of relational Marxism, the urban political ecology literature

has offered a contrasting approach to a large proportion of urban scholarship which

rests on the notion that cities are the antithesis to the natural environment. Instead

scholars within urban political ecology argue that the urban landscape is a vast,

interconnected ecological system, where evolving modalities of land use have

modified, reshaped and otherwise altered the hydrology, climatology, geomorphology

and bio-geographic characteristics of the natural environment rather thanconceiving of urbanisation as a process that inexorably displaces nature it is more

fruitful to explore how city-building is intimately connected with reworking nature

(Murray, 2009:171). As such, the contribution of urban political ecology is located

within the post dualistic efforts of relational Marxism, concerned with challenging

society-nature dualisms and positing instead that the material and symbolic, the

natural and the social, the built and wild, are inseparable aspects of the urban space.

Urban political ecology seeks to politicise understandings of observed social

processes and socio-ecological conditions, with cities understood as a particular form.

This politicisation is done through carrying out an excavation of the transformative

social and metabolic-ecological processes underlying their constitution, organisation

and change. With environments conceived of as produced and reproduced, emerging

through ongoing processes of mutual transformation between society and nature, this

15

Includes Wisner, 1995a; 2001; Harvey, 1996; Swyngedouw, 1996; 2004; Gandy, 1999; 2002; Kaikaand Swyngedouw, 2000; Swyngedouw and Kaika, 2000; Berry, 2001; Castree and Braun, 2001; Keil,

2003; Swyngedouw and Heynen, 2003; Kaika, 2005; Loftus, 2009


24/39

social construction/production approach suggests therefore that environments can be

potentially constituted in a multitude of forms, depending on the socio-ecological

processes underlying their (re)production. A political ecology framework seeks to

excavate these underlying processes, paying particular attention to social power

relations infusing socio-environmental change.

This guiding dimension of a political ecology approach is best captured as follows, it

is these power geometries and the social actors carrying them out that ultimately

decide who will have access to or control over, and who will be excluded from access

to and control over, resources and other components of the environment. These power

geometries, in turn, shape the particular social and political configurations and the

environments in which we live (Swyngedouw, 2009: 57; Swyngedouw et al., 2001;

Heynen et al., 2005). Finally, while a political ecology approach employs critical

insights to chop its way through the acquiescent acceptance that the world is

unchangeable (Loftus, 2009: 954) it then builds on these to contribute toward an

emancipatory project of socio-environmental change, developing ideas about an

alternative democratically organised world.

2.2.1. Central Contributions of Urban Political Ecology

As an offshoot of relational Marxism, Urban Political Ecology has also aimed to

advance this framework. A key contribution of Urban Political Ecology to relational

Marxism has emerged through its empirical focus on the urban environment,

including water, serving both to revive historical materialism and consequently

deepen insights into processes of urban metabolic processes of change. A second

central contribution of Urban Political Ecology to relational Marxism, is located upon

the point of critique of the original Smith thesis, as anthropocentric. Instead

contemporary analysis, particularly examining water-city-power interactions, has

developed from examining how water distribution is shaped by social relations of

power to examine how water comes to shape these relations. This move reflects a re-

conceptualisation of notions of agency conceiving of water and social relations as

mutually constitutive within urbanisation processes, taking the agency of nature

seriously.


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A further contribution of urban political ecology is to emphasise that what are

represented as natural crises are in fact produced through material and discursive

socio-natural processes. This applies as much to struggles over water access, water

scarcity, and natural disasters such as floods that often have the harshest

consequences for the urban poor. Urban political ecology understands these crisis as

socially produced, arguing that the built environment and the biophysical fabric of

cities are made and they function together as an organic whole (Castree, 1995; Castree

and Braun, 2001; Wisner, 2003) (Murray, 2009:172). The impact of this analysis is

to shatter traditional financial, technical or natural justifications of water inequalities

by illustrating how water distribution is more about political manipulation than

resource availability. Furthermore, revealing how the status quo is maintained through

a discourse of water scarcity, where the inadequate and unequal distribution

technology/network and high cost of water to the urban poor is muted through

blaming nature for the problem. This material and discursive production of scarcity

has been examined by Bakker (2000), Kaika (2003), and Swyngedouw (2004). In

particular Kaika (2003) examines the use of scarcity as a discursive vehicle in

building social consensus and facilitating particular socio-ecological processes

through her analysis of the 1989-1991 droughts in Athens.

A second and related contribution of urban political ecology is to emphasise that cities

shape and are shaped by their surrounding environment, through drawing on distant

food and energy sources, influencing the transportation networks required for these to

reach cities, the consumption of these materials as well as the generation and disposal

of wastes (Kaika, 2005; Bakker, 2010). Challenging a dualistic representation of the

separation between rural and city spaces. Furthermore, the material flows which cities

depend on require the construction of elaborate infrastructure to enable cities to

function, with the building and positioning of this infrastructure determined through

fundamentally political processes that consequently come to shape resource access,

and the material form of the city in particular forms as opposed to others.

Finally a key contribution of Urban Political Ecology has been to operate at the

interface between meta-theory and empirical investigation. Drawing on the

ontological insights offered within a relational Marxism as well as the related


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conceptual tools offered by Marx inCapital, in his efforts to explore the conditions

necessary for the reproduction of capitalist relations of production. However, the

impact of the approach has been to revive historical materialism and consequently

deepen insights into grounded processes of urban metabolic processes of change.

Furthermore, while the common theoretical threads amongst those engaged in work

around urban political ecology has predominantly been within the branch of relational

Marxism, an examination of the work particular of scholars examining urban water,

points to subtle particularities in their theoretical positions and the conceptual tools

mobilised, pointing to the development of analytical hybrids. For example the work of

Ekers and Loftus (2008), draws on concepts offered outside of relational Marxism in

order to push the relational and political project forward in the development of

understandings of the politics of socio nature within capitalism, focusing on urban

water politics in particular. They argue that while contemporary scholars working

within the political ecology of water have drawn on and revitalised historical

geographical materialism, no one has employed a Gramscian framework and little

thought has been given to what a Foucauldian approach could bring to understandings

of urban water politics (Ekers et al, 2008). They therefore aim to examine whether an

engagement with Gramsci and Foucault holds potential to advance understandings of

urban water provision. More explicitly for Ekers and Loftus (2008) the potential of

channelling Gramsci and Foucault is in providing a supporting framework through

which to consider whether everyday water relations can be understood as being

located within the operation of hegemony and maintenance of subtle forms of rule. A

Gramscian and Foucauldian analysis would enable more explicit reflections on the

position of the individual to broader networks of power in a decentralised form.

Furthermore they would allow for explicit reflections on the material basis of

ideology and hegemony maintenance through consensus building and coercion.

These efforts to construct a revived framework that moves across the boundaries of

structuralist and post-structuralist thought points to the potential to simultaneously

employ and renovate the conceptual tool-box of political ecology in undertaking

empirical study, while retaining the central concern with inserting the political into

understandings of socio-natural relations. Ekers and Loftus argue that while these

themes of social relations of power, the role of the state, and the material and

discursive production of nature have all been explored within the political ecology


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literature, they have not been located within an explicit framework of analysis.

Therefore for Ekers and Loftus the employment of Gramsci and Foucault could

suggest a potential to make these more explicit, locating them within the proposed

frameworks.

2.3. Challenges to Historical Materialist Analysis

Through its philosophy of internal relations, a relational Marxist approach, appears to

advance a more robust relational ontology by taking matter seriously, averting the

danger of positing a natural limits argument, and consequently serving as a potent

challenge to treatments of nature as universal and external. However, despite these

efforts, it has not avoided criticism, stemming predominantly from proponents of

New Materialism. It is significant however, that while contributing to efforts to re-

conceptualise society nature relations, relational Marxism has not evaded critique.

The main points of critique have been made by alternative relational theses, working

outside of the Marxian tradition, most notably branches of new materialism. However

for the purposes of this paper the New Materialist challenge, overlaps with relational

Marxism and the points of contention will not be explored. However the maincritiques levelled at a relational Marxism will be acknowledged and reflected upon.

Following this review we are then better positioned to consider the capacity of a

relational Marxist framework, and urban political ecology as an offshoot and later

advancement, to offer a third way of analysis into understanding the making of the

South African waterscape.

2.3.1. Moving beyond Anthropocentricism

While recognising the efforts of geographers such as George Henderson (1999) and

Gavin Bridge (2000) to emphasise the uncooperative nature of nature, critics have

argued that the overall predilection within this school has been toward a

anthropocentric approach (Castree, 2002; Holifield, 2009; Braun, 2006; Braun, 2010).

However, in contrast to this reading, it is argued that the review carried out above of

the later work of Urban Political Ecology as well as the work of Bridge and otherMarxist geographers demonstrates that significant renovations have been made since


28/39

Smiths seminal work. With these advances having lead to a relational Marxism

which takes matter seriously as an agent of change and is therefore neither

anthropocentric nor ecocentric. In this sense the relational Marxism holds up to the

critique.

2.3.2. Economic determinism in conceptualising power relationsand change

Marxists understand the particular form of metabolic relations to be informed by the

specific social relations within which they unfold; therefore the (co)production of

socio nature within capitalist relations is understood to be historically distinctive. This

is because under capitalism, relations between humans and non humans is an

exchange value relation above all else, due to the capitalisms basis in surplus

accumulation (Smith, 1984; Smith & OKeefe, 1980). Hence relational Marxists

contend that the metabolism of socio nature under capitalist social relations is

distinctive in that the transformative relation between society and nature is

governed centrally by the need to fulfil profit (Smith, 1984; Smith & OKeefe,

1980). This position has been critiqued for being economically deterministic and

guilty of perpetuating power asymmetries in developing understandings of the

relations and processes that constitute socio nature.

However in assessing this critique, it is argued that to theorise society nature

relations in abstraction from processes of capitalist accumulation is to miss a vital

aspect of their logic and consequences (Castree, 2002:123). Therefore, from this

point of view, it is suggested that a Marxist historical materialist approach offers the

best means of understanding metabolic relations as they unfold within capitalist

society, as this framework is guided both by ontological and political goals. However,

it is further argued that a relational Marxism could benefit from an insertion of more

explicit theorisations of power and change. A discussion of the potential theoretical

frameworks to be drawn on to renovate a relational Marxism, and strengthen

conceptions of power and change, is beyond the scope of this paper.


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2.3.3. The relational suf fic iency of the Dialectic

Critics have argued that the dialectical, historical materialist approach might not be

materialist enough. This final charge has been made due to what is understand as a

conflict between the expressed commitment of relational Marxists to a philosophy of

generalised relationality (as articulated through the philosophy of internal relations),

and a related desire to find foundational concepts and locate generative processes,

which is understood as an economic determinism (Braun, 2006). Based on the above,

it should be noted that this critique of the tensions of the dialectic pivots on the

broader critique of economic determinism. Therefore in responding to this critique of

the dialectic, it is worthwhile to recount the argument put forward in the preceding

section, in response to the broader critique of economic determinism. It was argued

that the mobilisation of conceptions promoting relational power symmetries has a de-

politicising effect. While, in contrast, the value of historical materialism is that it

functions both as an ontological and political project by offering the best means of

understanding metabolic relations as they unfold within capitalist society. Following

from this, the supposed tension in the dialectic as presented by critics, is understood

as actually pointing to the twofold ontological and political project of relational

Marxism, as opposed to conflicting and contradictory dimensions which imply the

insufficiency of the dialectic16.

3.0. Mobilising an ethnography of actor relations andpower to make sense of South African water flow

Water is essential for life and so imbued with symbolic meanings: purity, divinity

and health. It supports the ecologies on which we depend. As a resource it is also an

essential input for our economies so it is unsurprising that conflicts over the use,

16 In this section the focus has been on an engagement along the spaces of critique of relational

Marxism. However, the conclusions reached should not be taken as a suggestion that as a relational

ontology, a relational Marxism should not be renovated and developed through synthesis with concepts

offered within alternative relational theses, most notably new materialism. It is simply that such an

engagement into the ontological and political spaces of overlap and contention between these relational

approaches is beyond the purview of this paper.


30/39

ownership and conservation of water are long standing (Bakker, 2010:226). These

competing uses of water make water governance and analysis of the processes

shaping these difficult to capture. This paper has been concerned with moving beyond

the contemporary debates on water governance encircling notions of privatisation, by

arguing that these debates are narrowly conceived and limit the potential for re-

envisioning by framing the debate within a binary understanding of the state and

private sector as agents of delivery. Furthermore it has been suggested that the

alternatives presented, most notably the commons approach and human rights

approach, while suggesting an effort to move toward greater water equity, are also

limited in their capacity to present a fundamental challenge to a market

environmentalist logic. The treatment of water as an economic good and human right

in South Africa, taking the case of the Phiri residents versus Johannesburg Water as a

crystallisation of this tension, is a powerful illustration of the false antithesis

between market principles and the stated goal of human rights, and the ways in which

tensions between these principles are continuously mediated.

Therefore it was suggested that a third way of analysis is required to enable a reading

of the waterscape which moves beyond framing the debate within the posited

technical and managerial solutions. Instead it is argued that critical analysis and

efforts to achieve real transformation in water equity and distribution would be better

directed toward examining and excavating the terrain of power and politics which

function to constitute the observed environment, emerging as spaces of connection

and disconnection. Urban political ecology offers a potential model enabling an

analysis of the actual processes and relations mutually constituting the South African

waterscape, as emerging through specific historical geographical power struggles, as

essentially political processes and outcomes. In this final section, having alreadypresented the principle dimensions, strengths and critiques of a relational Marxism,

and urban political ecology, we will consider the capacity of this framework to unlock

the analytical limitations of the privatisation debate, offering an alternative lens

through which to examine the politics of water flow in South Africa, and how it

comes to transform or maintain geographies of exclusion.

Drawing on the outlining of the framework presented above, it is suggested that as a

conceptual framework a relational ontology and political ecology, guided by a


31/39

Marxian historical materialist perspective offers a compelling framework of analysis

and explanation as it is attentive to the processes (metabolic relations), and the

materiality of human and non-human actors in the co-production of socio-ecological

conditions as they unfold within contemporary capitalist society. Firstly, as a political

project, historical materialism supports an ongoing analysis of the current social and

political conditions of contemporary capitalist societies in light of their historical

development. Such a perspective necessitates a reinsertion of the political into

understandings of the observed emergent environment by locating this within larger

circuits of capital, power and actor flows, understood to be unfolding across space and

time. Furthermore, as a relational project, relational Marxism and political ecology as

an offshoot of this project, is concerned with an excavation of the mutually

constitutive internal relations, which come to be manifested in material water and

technology flows producing social and geographic spaces of connection and

disconnection. Such a framework also enables a bottom-up tracing of the relational

constitution of the waterscape.

Therefore, when guided by this framework, an effort to make sense of the observable

features of the South African waterscape, would necessarily have to move beyond

debates around agents of delivery, and focus instead on undertaking an excavation of

the spatial and historical dimensions of the human and non-human actor relations,

technologies, discourses, and governance infrastructure that mutually constitute the

observed environment. It is suggested that the value of such an approach would be to

challenge a reading of the environment as a naturalised thing, severed from that

which shapes its becoming. Emphasising instead an excavation of the real politics of

socio-natural production, including the politics of problematisation, and examining

how these function as instruments in supporting particular forms of socio-naturalproduction as opposed to others. Secondly, undertaken as an ethnography of actor

networks, such a tracing enables a surfacing of the nodes of power and spaces of

contestation that transform and/or lend a permanence to the emergent socio-natural

environment17. It is hoped that through this act of surfacing it is possible then to

show the competing interests, strategies, ideologies, mobilised discourses, flows of

power, and spatial and historical continuity and discontinuity moving through these

17

Convection currents within the earths mantle and outer core, operating below the visible crust, yetfunctioning as a heat transfer system that slowly moves the earths mantle, offers a useful metaphor in

envisaging underlying processes of permanence and both sudden or gradual change.


32/39

actor networks, thereby rendering the political ecology of production visible and

revealing the waterscape as a crystallised fetish. This can then be employed to read

back into the ongoing debate so as to open it up, making an argument for real change

that challenges the naturalisation of existing social and metabolic relations and their

emergent products.

The above understanding of the contribution of the proposed framework to offer a

third way of analysis, by excavating the relational processes co-producing the

waterscape is visually depicted in the Flow Chart below.

It is suggested that such a relational approach, working from the underlying relations

of becoming offers a route through which to re-envision, re-problematise, and re-

politicise the water crisis so as to move closer to conceiving of solutions which can

bring about real change.


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Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South African waterscape