PLA with Coordinadora de Agua in Cochabamba

Philipp Terhorst, 04.06.2003 07:28

I work with the Coordinadora de Defensa de Agua y de la Vida, the social movement coordination, and will undertake a field research from the middle of June to August of this year. I hope to make links to other researches in order to enrich my work and embedd into the current dynamics of research! Please get in touch!

My name is Philipp, I am currently enrolled in the program “Master in Water and Environmental Management” at WEDC, Loughborough University, UK.

My Masters research project, starting now and ending in September, focuses on the water utility management in Cochabamba, Bolivia. As you may be aware, Cochabamba in year 2000 experienced the popular reclamation of a failed privatisation of its water utility. Today, social, professional and government actors are working to create a sustainable and innovative public water utility that is socially controlled.

I work with the Coordinadora de Defensa de Agua y de la Vida, the social movement coordination, and will undertake a field research from the middle of June to August of this year.

We are considering the approach of participatory research and hope to apply action research methodology (PLA and pragmatic action research). I am myself a political activist, leaning towards anarchist, collectivist principles, and live in a radical roots housing cooperation and am involved in local activism around our social centre and global activism (PGA-related). My work with the Coordinadora is based on our mutual understanding on the need to radically change our situations by collective action, rejection of exploitation and external control and the creation of alternatives. The hope is to jointly inform “glocal” processes, i.e. the resistance to water privatisation, by analysing the work of the Coordinadora and offer lessons to the wider discussions of how to take control over water and sanitation services and organise socially-controlled O&M.

I am writing to you in the hope to find support for this research project, which has a long-term perspective and is embedded in the political contexts of anti-privatisation campaigns and political activism around water. I am especially interested in similar research experiences (not necessarily water-related) and methodological advice (frameworks for analysis, approaches, current work, good practice, tools etc).

Another mayor request is for frameworks for social movement research, the current debates around new social movements from non-hierarchical, liberation perspectives.

I am also keen to form relations with likeminded academics so as to allow me to welcome discussion on my work while I am in the field and afterwards (friendly, critical advice, support, peer review etc).

In the hope that these requests find time in your busy schedule, I finish by saying that it would be fantastic to hearing from you. I am a novice researcher and am trying to apply my political values and standards to my research. For that to succeed, I will need support and advice from experienced and likeminded people.

Thank you,


Philipp Terhorst

e-mail:: philthefurio@yahoo.co.uk
Homepage:: http://