How to govern the urban hydrosocial cycle: archaeo-genealogy of hydromentalities in the Swiss urban water sector between 1850 and 1950
Switzerland appears to be a privileged place to investigate the urban political ecology of tap water because of the specificities of its political culture and organization and the relative abundance of drinking water in the country. In this paper, we refer to a Foucauldian theorization of power that...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | deu |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2015-02-01
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| Series: | Geographica Helvetica |
| Online Access: | http://www.geogr-helv.net/70/33/2015/gh-70-33-2015.pdf |
| Summary: | Switzerland appears to be a privileged place to investigate the urban political
ecology of tap water because of the specificities of its political culture
and organization and the relative abundance of drinking water in the
country. In this paper, we refer to a Foucauldian theorization of power that
is increasingly employed in the social sciences, including in human
geography and political ecology. We also implement a Foucauldian
methodology. In particular, we propose an archaeo-genealogical analysis of
discourse to apprehend the links between urban water and the forms of
governmentality in Switzerland between 1850 and 1950. Results show that two
forms of governmentality, namely biopower and neoliberal governmentality,
were present in the water sector in the selected period. Nonetheless, they
deviate from the models proposed by Foucault, as their periodization and the
classification of the technologies of power related to them prove to be much
more blurred than Foucault's work, mainly based on France, might have
suggested. |
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| ISSN: | 0016-7312 2194-8798 |