Die Amerikas: Forschungskolloquium zu den Amerikas aus kulturwissenschaftlicher Sicht

Prof. Marcela López (Freie Universität Berlin)

Corporatization and Water Inequalities in Medellín, Colombia

In this talk, I will discuss how access to urban water has become a crucial terrain over which the expansion of market-based logic over fundamental human needs are both consolidated and contested. By tracing how urban water becomes commodified, controlled and accessed in Medellín, Colombia’s second largest city, I will ask why water inequalities are dramatically increasing in a city that is located in an area of bountiful hydrological conditions and owns one of the most successful public water utility companies in the Global South: the Empresas Públicas de Medellín (EPM, Public Enterprises of Medellín). The EPM is a publicly-owned multi-utility company that provides water and sanitation but also electricity, natural gas, telecommunication services and solid waste collection to a metropolitan population of over four million people, as well as having operations in five other countries in Latin America. The growth and productivity of EPM are especially stark in light of the fact that 13% of households in the city (one of the wealthiest cities in Latin America on a per capita basis) are denied access to water services for non-payment of bills or because their illegal land tenure status. By drawing attention to the strategies of EPM to commodify the flows of water together with the everyday practices of disconnected households to secure water and struggles to decommodify these flows, I will show why inequalities associated with access to and control over water are so important to contemporary urban politics and urban environments, and bear on important questions of how citizenship and basic rights are conceived.

Wann?            Donnerstag, 21. Juni 2018, 18 -20 Uhr

Wo?                Oettingenstr. 67, Raum L155 (Obergeschoss)

Veranstalter:  Institut für Ethnologie Lageplan

Programm zu den kulturwissenschaftlichen Forschungen in den Amerikas unter der Leitung von Prof. Dr. Eveline Dürr für das Sommersemester 2018 hier zum Download (70 KB).

Mehr Informationen zu Vorträgen am Institut für Ethnologie im Sommersemester 2018 finden Sie unter „Veranstaltungen".

Sie können auch das Archiv mit den Veranstaltungen der vergangenen Jahre besuchen.