Date post: | 04-Jun-2018 |
Category: |
Documents |
Upload: | oscar-dybedahl |
View: | 216 times |
Download: | 0 times |
of 39
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
1/39
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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
2/39
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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
3/39
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.
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
4/39
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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
5/39
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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
6/39
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)
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
7/39
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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
8/39
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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
9/39
(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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
10/39
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).
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
11/39
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).
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
12/39
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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
13/39
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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
14/39
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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
15/39
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.
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
16/39
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.
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
17/39
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.
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
18/39
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.
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
19/39
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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
20/39
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.
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
21/39
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).
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
22/39
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)
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
23/39
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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
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.
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
25/39
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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
26/39
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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
27/39
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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
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.
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
29/39
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.
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
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
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
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.
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
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.
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
33/39
ReferencesAlexander, P., 2010. Rebellion of the poor: South Afica's service delivery protests - a
preliminary analysis. Review of African Political Economy 37 (123), 25-40.
ANC, 1994. Reconstruction and development programme: A policy framework.African National Congress, Johannesburg.
Bakker, K. and Bridge, G. (2006). Material Worlds? Resource Geographies and the
matter of nature, Progress in Human Geography, Vol.30, No. 1: 5-27
Bakker, K., 2007. The 'commons' versus the 'commodity': Alter-globalisation, anti-
privatisation, and the human right to water in the Global South. Antipode 39 (1), 430-
455.
Bakker, K., 2010. Privatizing water: governance failure and the world's urban water
crisis. Cornell University Press, New York.
Bond, P., 2000a. Rationales for basic infrastructure, in: Trenton, N.J. (Ed.), Cities of
Gold, townships of Coal: Essays on South africa's New Urban Crisis. Africa World
Press.
Bond, P., 2000b. Transformation in Infrastructure Policy from Apartheid to
Democracy, MSP Project Publications Paper. MSP.
Bond, P., 2003. Commodification of Public goods: Critique and alternative, Paperpresented to World council of churches dialogue with the World Bank and
International monetary Fund, Geneva.
Bond, P., 2005. GLOBALISATION/COMMODIFICATION OR
DEGLOBALISATION/DECOMMODIFICATION IN URBAN SOUTH AFRICA.
Policy Studies 26 (3), 337-358.
Bond, P., Ruitgers, G., McDonald, D., Greeff, L., 2001. Water Privatisation in
Southern Africa: The state of the Debate. Environmental Monitoring Group.
Bogue, R. (2009). A Thousand Ecologies. In B. Herzogenrath (eds), Deleuze /Guattari & Ecology. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 42-56
Braun, B. (2006a). Global Natures in the Space of Assemblage, Progress in Human
Geography, Vol. 30, No. 5: 644-54
Braun, B. (2006b). Towards a new earth and new humanity: nature, ontology, politics.
In N. Castree and D. Gregory (eds), David Harvey: A Critical Reader. Oxford:
Blackwell, pp. 191-222
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
34/39
Braun, B. (2009). Nature. In N. Castree et al (eds), A companion to environmental
geography. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 191-222
Brown, J., 2010. Assuming too much? Participatory water resource governance in
South Africa. The Geographical Journey.
Butler, A., 2009. Contemporary South Africa, 2nd Edition ed. Palgrave Macmillan,
UK.
Castree, N. (1995). The nature of produced nature,Antipode, Vol. 27, No. 1: 12-48
Castree, N. and Braun, B. (1998). The construction of nature and the nature of
construction. In B. Braun and N. Castree (eds), Remaking Reality. New York:
Routledge, pp. 3-42
Castree, N. (2001). Socializing Nature: Theory, Practice, and Politics. In N. Castree
and B. Braun (eds), Social Nature. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 1-21
Castree, N. (2001). Marxism, Capitalism, and the Production of Nature. In N. Castree
and B. Braun (eds), Social Nature. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 189-207
Castree, N. and MacMillan, T. (2001). Dissolving Dualisms: Actor-networks and the
Reimagination of Nature. In N. Castree and B. Braun (eds), Social Nature.
Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 208-224
Castree, N. (2002). False Antitheses? Marxism, Nature and Actor-Networks,
Antipode, Vol. 34, No. 1: 111-146
Castree, N. (2006). The Detour of Critical Theory. In N. Castree and D. Gregory
(eds), David Harvey: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 247-269
Dawson, M., 2010. The cost of belonging: exploring class citizenship in Soweto's
water war. Citizenship Studies 14 (4), 381-394.
Debbane, A., 2007. The dry plight of freedom: Commodifying water in the Western
Cape, South Africa. Antipode 39 (1), 222-226.
Deedat, H., Cottle, E., 2002. Cost-recovery and pre-paid water meters and the choleraoutbreak in Kwazulu-Natal, in: McDonald, D., Pape, J. (Eds.), Cost-recovery and the
crisis of service delivery in South Africa. HSRC, Cape Town.
Demeritt, D. (2001). Being Constructive about Nature. In N. Castree and B. Braun
(eds), Social Nature.Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 22-40
Demeritt, D. (2002). What is the social construction of nature? A typology and
sympathetic critique, Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 26, No. 6: 767-790
DWAF, 1994. Water Supply and Sanitation White Paper, in: Forestry, D.o.W.A.a.
(Ed.). DWAF.
8/14/2019 Political Ecology and Relational Marxism: offering a third way of analysis into the (co)production of the South Afric
35/39
DWAF, 1997. Water Services Act, in: DWAF (Ed.), Government Gazette. DWAF.
DWAF, 2005. A history of the first decade of water service delivery in South Africa
1994-2004. DWAF, Pretoria.
Fil-Flynn, M., 2001. The Electricity Crisis in Soweto, MSP Occasional Papers SeriesNo. 1. Municipal Services Project, Cape Town.
Fitzsimmons, M. (1989a). The matter of nature,Antipode, Vol. 21, 106-120
Foster, J. (2000). Marxs Ecology: materialism and nature. New York: Monthly
Review Press
Fontein, J., 2008. The Power of Water: Landscape, Water and the State in Southern
and Eastern Africa: An Introduction. Journal of Southern African Studies 34 (4), 737-
756.
Foster, J. et al (2010). The Ecological Drift: Capitalisms war on the earth. New
York: Monthly Review Press
Hagg, G., Emmett, T., 2003. Muddying the elephants water: Policy and Practice in
community water supply. Politeia 22 (1), 67-92.
Hart, G., 2008. The Provocations of Neoliberalism: Contesting the Nation and
Liberation after Apartheid. Antipode 40 (4), 678-705.
Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Oxford:
BlackwellHarvey, D. (2010). The Enigma of Ca