ESR 10: Neither privatizing nor-remunicipalizing: Austerity as a means of initiating re-commoning governance practices
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Employer: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam |
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Job location: Amsterdam Netherlands |
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Apply before: 15 Mar 2019 |
Summary
This ESR position will:
Investigate to what extent the need to both protect the environment and secure jobs under economic crisis and austerity frameworks, can mobilize new sets of actors and can ignite new paradigms for water governance.
Examine ways in which the pressure of the international paradigm to privatize water combined with the inability to find investors under an economic crisis can lead to innovative ways of thinking and acting ‘outside the box’ around water governance and to re-thinking practices for re-commoning water resources.
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Host institution: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Principal supervisor: Prof. Maria Kaika
Co-supervisor: Prof. Jampel Dell’Angelo
Non-academic co-supervisor: Mr. Georges Archontopoulos
Application deadline: 15 March 2020
Starting date: Between 1 May and 1 September 2020
Duration: 3 years
Topic
The recent austerity crisis in Europe has given rise to stronger and more populous movements demanding re-municipalisation or re-commoning of water resources. These movements differ from past attempts to re-commoning and re-municipalising water in two important ways:
The geographical scope of these grassroots movements fighting for re-commoning water and against privatisation ranges from intra-Europan (e.g. the European Citizens’ initiative for the right to water), to regional (the recent campaign at Lazio, Italy, for declaring water a service of public interest) to local initiatives (e.g. the SOSte to nero, and 136 movement against the privatisation of the water company of Thessaloniki, Greece).
The Actors involved in these movements under austerity conditions consist of social groups and organizations who were previously considered to be neither ‘revolutionary’ nor ‘militant’, and certainly not ‘radical’ or ‘innovative’ in their outlook philosophy and praxis. These emerging actors who think outside the box and often act ‘out of their traditional role and character’ include trade unions, home carers (particularly women), children, and pensioners.
The project will pay particular attention to these actors who were ignored in previous research, but are now central in initiating fresh ways of thinking about managing ‘the commons’ under conditions of crisis and austerity. The project will assess the role they play in building alliances across segments of the society, and internationally, for reclaiming the commons through a new process of subjectivisation at different geographical scales and social contexts.
This ESR position will:
Investigate to what extent the need to both protect the environment and secure jobs under economic crisis and austerity frameworks, can mobilize new sets of actors and can ignite new paradigms for water governance.
Examine ways in which the pressure of the international paradigm to privatize water combined with the inability to find investors under an economic crisis can lead to innovative ways of thinking and acting ‘outside the box’ around water governance and to re-thinking practices for re-commoning water resources.
Expected results:
Document and assess new innovative paradigms for managing water as the commons
Assess the extent to which these new practices can be upscaled to an EU and international level
Compare and contrast the outcomes of such re-commoning practices, to existing paradigms of either municipal or privately-run water sectors
(4) Understand and explain where such paradigms succeed and where they fail. Why do they fail (or succeed) locally in changing water management practices? Why they fail (or succeed) in scaling-up, and in altering global water management practices? Why and how they succeed or fail in inspiring further movements and practices?
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