Insurgency, Price, Sovereignty: The Struggle Against Financialized Water in Europe

Dr. Andrea Muehlebach, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto

Tuesday, February 27, 2017

1:15 - 2:30 pm, AQ 5067, Ellen Gee room
SFU, Burnaby Campus

Biography

Abstract:
This talk explores recent water insurgencies, price-wars, and referenda in Ireland and Italy in order to reflect on how water has become a vehicle for critiques of the privatization and financialization of water. Water - as life, gift, vital resource, and infrastructure - has thus emerged as symbol and substance through which protesters in different parts of Europe have formulated popular critiques of finance capital and the forms of capitalist predation and political authoritarianism that accompany it. At stake is the emergence of what I call a "vital politics," which opposes the vitalism of water to enclosure, the commons to private property, and collective care over extractivist violence.

Free and open to all

Light refreshments served