Community Water and Sanitation Alternatives in Peri-Urban Cochabamba: Progressive Politics or Neoliberal Utopia?

Abstract

This thesis is about the tensions faced by communitarian water service providers in peri-urban Cochabamba, Bolivia, in their continued dependence on private water vending businesses, despite efforts to socialize service delivery. Based on fieldwork conducted in Cochabamba from May-July, 2013, this thesis argues that due in part to a lack of government intervention and regulation, many communitarian water associations in Cochabamba are being held captive by private water vendors who exploit the city’s unequal distribution of water resources for profit. It makes this argument by exploring two main points: that communitarian water associations leverage progressive forms of organization to improve service delivery, but are hindered by barriers which lie outside their control; and that small-scale water businesses are able to exploit the failures of the formal state/public and informal communitarian systems by positioning themselves as a necessary operation, in a way which limits the state’s ability to regulate their activities.