Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T10:10:27.323Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Socially Differentiated Urban Flood Governance in Mexico: Ambiguous Negotiations and Fragmented Contestations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 August 2015

ANJA NYGREN
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Cities around the world are developing new ways of governing risks and vulnerabilities. In the new flood-governance measures, technological risk-prevention is linked to programmes of social resilience and cultural adaptation. By focusing on the catastrophic floods in the city of Villahermosa, Mexico, this article argues that new flood-governance strategies rely on complicated forms of neoliberal governance, in which flood governance is turned into a matter of adaptation and self-responsibilisation, while scant attention is paid to the socio-spatial distribution of vulnerabilities. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in three socially differentiated neighbourhoods of Villahermosa, this article demonstrates how flood-governance strategies and the residents' responses to them vary across the city and how the production of flood risk is connected to the uneven production of urban space. The institutional acts of governing aim to render certain population groups governable, whilst being unable to eradicate dispersed contestation efforts.

Spanish abstract

Ciudades en diferentes partes del mundo están desarrollando nuevas formas de manejar riesgos y vulnerabilidades. En las nuevas maneras de gobernanza frente a las inundaciones, las formas técnicas de prevenir el riesgo son vinculadas a los programas de resiliencia social y adaptación cultural. Enfocando en las inundaciones catastróficas en la ciudad de Villahermosa, México, este artículo sostiene que las nuevas estrategias de gobernanza se basan en formas complicadas de gobernanza neoliberalista, donde la gobernanza del agua se convierte en un asunto de adaptación y auto-responsibilidad, mientras se le presta poca atención a la distribución socio-espacial de las vulnerabilidades. Basado en el trabajo de campo etnográfico en tres barrios socialmente diferenciados de Villahermosa, este estudio demuestra como las estrategias de gobernanza de las inundaciones y las respuestas de los residentes a ellas varían a lo largo de la ciudad, y como la producción del riesgo sobre la inundación está conectada con la producción desigual del espacio urbano. Los mecanismos institucionales de gobernanza buscan convertir ciertos grupos de población entes gobernables, mientras son incapaces de erradicar los dispersos esfuerzos de resistencia.

Portuguese abstract

Ao redor do mundo, cidades estão desenvolvendo novas formas de gerenciamento de riscos e vulnerabilidades. Nas novas medidas de governança de enchentes, tecnologias de prevenção de riscos estão ligadas a programas de resiliência social e adaptação cultural. Focando nas enchestes catastróficas ocorridas na cidade de Villahermosa, México, este artigo argumenta que as novas estratégias de gestão de enchentes contam com formas complicadas de governança neoliberal, nas quais a gestão de inundações são transformadas em uma questão de adaptação e auto-reponsabilização. Paralelamente, pouca atenção é dada à distribuição sócio-espacial de vulnerabilidades. Baseado em trabalhos de campo etnográfico em três bairros socialmente distintas de Villahermosa, este estudo demonstra como estratégias de gestão de enchentes, e as reações dos moradores a elas, variam ao redor da cidade; e como a produção de risco de enchentes está conectada à produção desigual de espaços urbanos. As ações institucionais de governo têm como meta tornar certos grupos populacionais governáveis, enquanto permanecem incapazes de erradicar esforços dispersos de contestação.

Keywords

citiescontestationfloodgovernanceMexiconeoliberalismsocial differentiationciudadesdesafíoinundacióngobernanzaMéxiconeoliberalismodiferenciación socialcidadescontestaçãoenchentegovernançaMéxiconeoliberalismodiferenciação social
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , May 2016 , pp. 335 - 365
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), ‘Summary for Policymakers’, in C. B. Field et al. (eds.), Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 1–32. The terms risk, vulnerability and resilience have contextually varied meanings. In this study, environmental risks refer to people's exposure to environmental threats and uncertainties. Vulnerability refers to people's inability to withstand adverse effects from multiple stressors, including everyday uncertainties and catastrophic events. Social resilience refers to people's capacity to adapt to changing conditions and to recover from an environmental disaster. See Füssel, Hans-Martin, ‘Vulnerability: A Generally Applicable Conceptual Framework for Climate Change Research’, Global Environmental Change, 17: 2 (2007), pp. 155–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ashley, R. M., Blaskby, J., Newman, R., Gersonius, B., Poole, A., Lindley, G., Smith, S., Ogden, S. and Nowell, R., ‘Learning and Action Alliances to Build Capacity for Flood Resilience’, Journal of Flood Risk Management, 5: 1 (2012), pp. 14–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pahl-Wostl, Claudia, Caps, Marc, Dewulf, Art, Mostert, Erik, Tabora, David and Taillieu, Tharsi, ‘Social Learning and Water Resources Management’, Ecology and Society, 12: 2 (2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 There is huge variation in the way the term ‘neoliberalism’ is used in contemporary scholarship. As Ferguson, points out, it is important to make an analytical distinction between usage of neoliberalism as ‘arts of governing’, in the Foucauldian sense, and neoliberalism as a macroeconomic doctrine and class-based ideology. Ferguson, James, ‘The Uses of Neoliberalism’, Antipode, 41 (2010), pp. 166–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Brenner, Neil, Peck, Jamie and Theodore, Nik, ‘Variegated Neoliberalization: Geographies, Modalities, Pathways’, Global Networks, 10: 2 (2010), pp. 182–222CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nancy Fraser, Scales of Justice: Reimagining Political Space in a Globalizing World (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

4 R. M. Ashley et al., ‘Learning and Action Alliances’.

5 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population (London: Palgrave, 2007), p. 193.

6 For analyses on environmental governance in Mexico City, see Aguilar, Adrian, ‘Peri-Urbanization, Illegal Settlements and Environmental Impact in Mexico City’, Cities, 25: 3 (2008), pp. 133–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wiggle, Jill, ‘The “Graying” of “Green” Zones: Spatial Governance and Irregular Settlement in Xochimilco, Mexico City’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 38: 2 (2014), pp. 573–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Gandy, Matthew, ‘Landscapes of Disaster: Water, Modernity, and Urban Fragmentation in Mumbai’, Environment and Planning A, 40: 1 (2008), pp. 108–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Mark Pelling, ‘Toward a Political Ecology of Urban Environmental Risk: The Case of Guyana’, in Karl S. Zimmerer and Thomas J. Bassett (eds.), Political Ecology: An Integrative Approach to Geography and Environment-Development Studies (New York: Guilford, 2003), p. 77.

9 Post-Foucauldian govenmentality refers here to attempts to renew Foucauldian ideas on regulation and governance to more recent modes of neoliberal governance, as suggested by Fraser, Scales of Justice, pp. 116–30. See also Collier, Stephen J., ‘Topologies of Power: Foucault's Analysis of Political Government beyond Governmentality’, Theory, Culture, Society, 26: 6 (2009), pp. 78–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mitchell Dean, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society, 2nd ed. (London: Sage, 2010); Rose, Nikolas, O'Malley, Pat and Valverde, Mariana, ‘Governmentality’, Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 2 (2006), pp. 83–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Michel Foucault, ‘Governmentality’, in Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose (eds.), The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984 (London: New Press, 2003), pp. 229–45.

11 Nikolas Rose (1999) Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 20.

12 Brenner, Peck and Theodore, ‘Variegated Neoliberalization’, Collier, Stephen J., ‘Neoliberalism as Big Leviathan, or …? A Response to Wasquant and Hilgers’, Social Anthropology, 20: 2 (2012), pp. 186–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Mckee, Kim, ‘Post-Foucauldian Governmentality: What Does it Offer Critical Social Policy Analysis?’, Critical Social Policy, 29: 3 (2009), pp. 465–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Bogaert, Koenraad, ‘The Problem of Slums: Shifting Methods of Neoliberal Urban Government in Morocco’, Development and Change, 42: 3 (2011), pp. 709–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Nielsen, Morten, ‘Inverse Governmentality: The Paradoxical Production of Peri-Urban Planning in Maputo, Mozambique’, Critique of Anthropology, 31: 4 (2011), pp. 329–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Collier, ‘Topologies of Power’; Guarneros-Meza, Valeria, ‘Mexican Urban Governance: How Old and New Institutions Coexist and Interact’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33: 2 (2009), pp. 463–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Jessop, Bob, ‘From Micro-Powers to Governmentality: Foucault's Work on Statehood, State Formation, Statecraft and State Power’, Political Geography, 26: 1 (2007), pp. 34–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 Fraser, ‘Scales of Justice’, pp. 125–6; Swyngedouw, Erik, ‘Governance Innovation and the Citizen: the Janus Face of Governance-Beyond-the-State’, Urban Studies, 42: 11 (2005), pp. 1191–2006CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Roy, Ananya, ‘Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern Urbanism’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35: 2 (2011), pp. 223–38CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; Simone, Abdou Maliq, ‘2009 Urban Geography Plenary Lecture on Intersections, Anticipations, and Provisional Publics: Remaking District Life in Jakarta’, Urban Geography, 31: 3 (2010), pp. 285–308CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Nielsen, ‘Inverse Governmentality’, p. 352. For popular reinterpretations of official environmental and planning narratives, see Keith Pezzoli, Human Settlements and Planning for Ecological Sustainability: The Case of Mexico City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998); Mathews, Andrew S., ‘Unlikely Alliances: Encounters between State Science, Nature Spirits, and Indigenous Industrial Forestry in Mexico, 1926–2008’, Current Anthropology, 50: 1 (2009), pp. 75–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 Sletto, Björn, ‘Insurgent Planning and Its Interlocutors: Studio Pedagogy as Unsanctioned Practice in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic’, Journal of Planning Education and Research, 33: 2 (2012), pp. 228–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Auyero, Javier, ‘Visible Fists, Clandestine Kick, and Invisible Elbows: Three Forms of Regulating Neoliberal Poverty’, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 89 (2010), pp. 5–26Google Scholar; Goldstein, Daniel M., ‘In Our Own Hands: Lynching, Justice and the Law in Bolivia’, American Ethnologist, 30: 1 (2003), pp. 22–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nygren, Anja, ‘Competing Claims on Disputed Lands: The Complexity of Resource Tenure in the Nicaraguan Interior’, Latin American Research Review, 39: 1 (2004), pp. 123–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Bayat, Asef and Biekart, Kees, ‘Cities of Extremes’, Development and Change, 40: 5 (2009), pp. 815–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David V. Carruthers (ed.), Environmental Justice in Latin America: Problems, Promise, and Practice (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2008); Anja Nygren (2014) ‘Eco-Imperialism and Environmental Justice’, in Stewart Lockie, David A. Sonnenfeld and Dina R. Fisher (eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Social and Environmental Change (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 58–69.

24 Javier Auyero and Deborah A. Swistun, Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 8–12.

25 Norma Esther García Meza (1993) Vida urbana y cambio social: el caso de Villahermosa, 1970–1990 (Villahermosa: Universidad Juárez Autónoma de Tabasco, 1993), p. 2.

26 GET (Gobierno del Estado de Tabasco), ‘Plan estatal de desarrollo 2007–2012’, 2010, p. 14.

27 CEPAL (Comisión Económica para América Latina), Tabasco: características e impacto socioeconómico de las inundaciones provocadas a finales de octubre y a comienzos de noviembre de 2007 por el frente frío número 4 (México DF: CEPAL, 2008).

28 Tabasco Hoy, 8 Nov. 2007, Presente, 26 April 2008, and Tabasco Hoy, 8 Oct. 2008. For more detailed analysis of the media discourses, see Rinne, Pia and Nygren, Anja, ‘From Resistance to Resilience: Media Discourses on Urban Flood Governance in Mexico’, Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 17 (2015), pp. 1–23Google Scholar.

29 Aparicio, Javier, Martínez-Austria, Poliopotro F., Güiton, Alberto and Ramírez, Aldo I., ‘Floods in Tabasco, Mexico: A Diagnosis and Proposal for Courses of Action’, Journal of Flood Risk Management, 2: 2 (2009), pp. 132–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perevochtchikova, María and de la Torre, José Luís Lezama, ‘Causas de un desastre: inundaciones del 2007 en Tabasco, México’, Journal of Latin American Geography, 9: 2 (2010), pp. 73–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Murray, Martin J., ‘Fire and Ice: Unnatural Disasters and the Disposable Urban Poor in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33: 1 (2009), p. 167CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Alain Cerwonka and Lisa H. Malkki, Improvising Theory: Process and Temporality in Ethnographic Fieldwork (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 14.

32 CONAGUA (Comisión Nacional del Agua) (2012) ‘Plan hídrico integral de Tabasco’. Available at www.cna.gob.mx/Contenido.aspx?n1=4&n2=103&n3=194 (accessed 5 May 2012).

33 Tabasco Hoy, 2 Nov. 2007.

34 Author's interviews 15 Feb. 2011 and 21 Feb. 2011; group discussion 17 Oct. 2011.

35 PEOT, ‘Programa Estatal de Ordenamiento Territorial y Desarrollo Urbano del Estado de Tabasco 2007–2012’. Gobierno del Estado de Tabasco, 2008.

36 For similar issues raised concerning the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, see Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright (eds.), Race, Place, and Environmental Justice After the Hurricane Katrina: Struggles to Reclaim, Rebuild, and Revitalize New Orleans and the Gulf Coast (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2009).

37 On differentiated citizenship and its contestations, see Holston, James, ‘Contesting Privilege with Right: The Transformation of Differentiated Citizenship in Brazil’, Citizenship Studies, 15: 3–4 (2011), pp. 335–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Earle, Lucy, ‘From Insurgent to Transgressive Citizenship: Housing, Social Movements and the Politics of Rights in São Paulo’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 44: 1 (2012), pp. 97–126CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Author's interview, 15 Feb. 2011.

39 GET, ‘Evaluación y actualización: plan estatal de desarrollo 2007–2012’. Gobierno del Estado de Tabasco, 2010, p. 156.

40 For an interesting analysis of the political reconfiguration of urban risks in Colombia, see Zeiderman, Austin, ‘On Shaky Ground: The Making of Risk in Bogotá’, Environment and Planning A, 44: 7 (2012), pp. 1570–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Author's interviews, 17 Oct. 2011 and 19 Oct. 2011. See also Comisión Nacional de Derechos Humanos-Tabasco (2011). Available at www.cndh.org.mx/sites/all/fuentes/documentos/Recomendaciones/2011/REC_2011_061.pdf (accessed 7 May 2012).

42 Author's interviews, 21 Feb. 2011 and 19 Oct. 2011.

43 Author's interviews, 16 Feb. 2011 and 21 Oct. 2011. See also flood specialists' and government officials' interviews in the regional newspaper of Presente, 26 May 2008 and 10 April 2010.

44 Ferguson, ‘The Uses of Neoliberalism’; Swyngedouw, ‘Governance Innovation’.

45 Rose, O'Malley and Valverde, ‘Governmentality’.

46 Dean, ‘Governmentality’, pp. 30–7.

47 Mckee, ‘Post-Foucauldian Governmentality’, p. 479.

48 Nielsen, ‘Inverse Governmentality’, p. 331.

49 Author's interview, 12 Aug. 2011.

50 Author's interview, 8 Aug. 2011.

51 Author's interviews, 11 Aug. 2011, 17 Aug. 2011 and 19 Oct. 2011.

52 For an inspiring analysis how ideas of trash and waste change over time and context, and how radical art may alter our imagination of the slums, see Jones, Gareth A., ‘Slumming About: Aesthetics, Art and Politics’, City, 15: 6 (2011), pp. 696–708CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For corresponding ideas concerning urban planning, see Miraftab, Faranak, ‘Insurgent Planning: Situating Radical Planning in the Global South’, Planning Theory, 8: 1 (2009), pp. 32–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Author's interview, 11 Feb. 2011.

54 Author's interview, 12 Aug. 2011.

55 There was lively discussion on corrupt practices in flood governance in the Tabascan media. The newspapers had a wide coverage of corrupt practices associated with flood governance, stating that much of the work carried out in the name of flood prevention has lined the pockets of corrupt government officials and greedy construction companies (Tabasco Hoy, 8 Oct. 2008; Tabasco Hoy, 19 June 2010; Presente, 29 Sept. 2010).

56 Walker, Gordon, ‘Beyond Distribution and Proximity: Exploring the Multiple Spatialities of Environmental Justice’, Antipode, 41: 4 (2009), pp. 614–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 These rates are relatively high, considering that home insurance is not common in Mexico.

58 Author's interview, 11 Aug. 2011.

59 Similar notes have been made of the everyday life in various Southern cities. For Lagos, see Gandy, Matthew, ‘Planning, Anti-Planning and the Infrastructure Crisis Facing Metropolitan Lagos’, Urban Studies, 43: 2 (2006), pp. 271–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for Dakar, Johannesburg and Jakarta, see Abdou Maliq Simone, City Life from Jakarta to Dakar: Movements at the Crossroads (New York: Routledge, 2010).

60 For similar notions concerning the cities of Querétaro and San Luis Potosí in Mexico, see Guarneros-Meza, ‘Mexican Urban Governance’, pp. 474–5.

61 There was lively discussion on this issue in the Tabascan newspapers in 2011. Social-justice activists claimed that the attempts to control the flow of floodwater through canals, saves some people at the expense of sacrificing others. See e.g. Tabasco Hoy, 16 Nov. 2011.

62 Bayat and Biekart, ‘Cities of Extreme’, p. 823.

63 Michel Foucault, ‘Space, Knowledge and Power’, in Paul Rabinow (ed.), The Foucault Reader (London: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 245.

64 See Sletto, ‘Insurgent Planning’; Zeiderman, ‘On Shaky Ground’, pp. 1575–6.

65 Nygren, ‘Eco-Imperialism and Environmental Justice’.

66 Auyero and Swistun, ‘Flammable’, pp. 4–8.

67 Author's interview, 12 Aug. 2011.

68 Author's interviews, 12 Aug. 2011, 23 Aug. 2011 and 18 Oct. 2011.

69 Scheper-Hughes, Nancy, ‘Parts Unknown: Undercover Ethnography of the Organs-Trafficking Underworld’, Ethnography, 5: 1 (2004), p. 45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

70 David Schlosberg, Environmental Justice and the New Pluralism: The Challenge of Difference for Environmentalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 96, 120.

71 Nicolas Mathias Risdell, ‘Un crimen a la tierra de Morelos: agravio, conflicto y justicia ambiental 2006–2011’, unpubl. PhD diss, Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México DF, 2012.

72 Author's interview, 2 Aug. 2011.

73 Weszkalnys, ‘A Robust Square’, p. 258.

74 Auyero, ‘Ínvisible Fists’; Bogaert, ‘The Problem of Slums’; Nielsen, ‘Inverse Governmentality’.

75 Swyngedouw, ‘Governance Innovation’, p. 1993.

76 Tania M. Li, The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development and the Practice of Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), pp. 1–6.