Framing the Debate on Water Marketization and Privatization, Leila M. Harris

How and why have water marketization and privatization emerged as hegemonic? This chapter reviews the state of knowledge in this regard, suggesting that the ‘bundling’ of these concepts as necessarily linked has been crucial to their rapid uptake. Linking to other themes of the book, the chapter also suggests that these processes are connected to ideas of crisis, and may also emerge in tension with participation imperatives. The chapter calls for genealogies of privatization and marketization, including attention to key institutions, as well as attention to variegation with respect to differentiated effects and pathways of these processes in the contemporary moment.