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Paying for water and the geography of commodities
Author(s) -
Page Ben
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
transactions of the institute of british geographers
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.196
H-Index - 107
eISSN - 1475-5661
pISSN - 0020-2754
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-5661.2005.00172.x
Subject(s) - reinterpretation , commodification , commodity , politics , globe , production (economics) , work (physics) , economics , psychoanalytic theory , sociology , economy , political science , market economy , microeconomics , law , medicine , mechanical engineering , ophthalmology , engineering , psychology , physics , acoustics , psychotherapist
Across the globe there is an ongoing debate about whether water ought to be treated as a commodity. This paper argues that recent geographical work on commodities can usefully inform these debates amongst environmental and development policymakers. First, the paper uses a case study from Cameroon to show that the commodification of public water supplies is not new, permanent or inevitable. Second, it uses the case study and insights from the psychoanalytic literature to examine the relationship between the willingness‐to‐pay for water and knowledge amongst water users about the costs of production. It is argued that the commodity fetish remains a useful concept, but that it requires reinterpretation. It concludes that demystifying the commodity includes not only unveiling the politics of production but also understanding the politics of the practice of exchange by considering the socio‐synthetic effects of treating things as commodities.