UC Berkeley

This project examines the politics of water provision in low-income areas of large, developing cities. In the last two decades, water privatization has become a global paradigm, emerging as a potential means for addressing the urban water crisis. In Manila, the site of the world's largest water privatization project, service to low-income areas has improved significantly in the post-privatization era. But whereas expansion of a water utility typically involves the replacement of informal providers, the experience in Manila demonstrates that the rapid connection of low-income areas actually hinges, in part, on the selective inclusion and exclusion of these smaller actors. Based on an ethnography of the private utilities and community-based providers, I use the persistence of small water networks as a lens for exploring the limits of water privatization in Manila.

I focus on what I call micro-networks — community-built infrastructure that extends the formal, private utilities into low-income neighborhoods that the utilities do not wish to serve directly. In such a setup, the utility provides water only as far as the community boundary; beyond that, the micro-network operator constructs internal infrastructure, monitors for leakage and theft, and collects bills. But while these communities may gain access to safer water, they are also subject to higher costs and heightened disciplinary measures. By tracing the ways in which the utilities selectively use micro-networks to manage sub-populations, I show how the utilities make low-income spaces more governable. Delegating localized water management to micro-network operators depoliticizes the utilities' roles, shifting the sociopolitical difficulties of water provision to community organizations, while allowing the utilities to claim that these areas are served.

This research leads to three related arguments. First, the persistence of small water networks highlights lingering inequities in access to water, for micro-network consumers are subject to disparities in cost, materials, and personal freedoms. Though Manila's water privatization project has resulted in significant improvements to the centralized system, its success must be tempered by the inequalities that remain. Second, the two utilities are largely able to shape both the geographies of water access and the production of knowledge. For this reason, the utilities typically use micro-networks where cost recovery may be difficult — such as in areas with uncertain land tenure or where higher levels of nonpayment are perceived — while including these areas in their aggregate coverage statistics. Third, the presence of multiple providers of water and other basic services blurs the boundaries between public, private, and community. But that blurriness serves to consolidate the private utilities' power, while increasing the opacity by which citizens navigate processes related to urban water provision.

The persistence of micro-networks thus allows us to understand the ways in which low-income spaces are made more governable. By focusing on this peri-urban frontier, this project asserts that differentiation and discipline serve simultaneously as tools of governance and as points of contestation. What emerges is a waterscape consisting not of one type of privatization — where service and access are uniformly provided — but multiple, coexisting, and differentiated privatizations.