Contesting Water Privatisation through an Efficiency Narrative, 23 July Water and Sanitation Utilities in the Global South: Re-centering the Debate on “Efficiency” Susan Spronk (Review of Radical Political Economics 2010) Date: Wednesday, 23 July 2014 Time: 12:30-2pm Venue: CCS Seminar Room, 6th floor of Memorial Tower Building, UKZN Howard College Presenter: Susan Spronk Topic: Ideological arguments sustain the belief that the private sector is more efficient than the public, and these persist despite ambiguous empirical evidence. The privatization agenda rests on normative assumptions about “economic efficiency” that fail to adequately address the social goals of water and sanitation provision. Civil society can enter the debate on “efficiency” and re-centre it to consider “social efficiency” and the negative effect that privatization has on citizenship rights. Since the Cochabamba Water War of 2000, Bolivia is a site where this discursive contestation is at its most intense. Presenter: Susan Spronk is an Associate Professor of Development Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her doctorate was in political science at York University, and she has spent many years in the strugggles for justice in Bolivia and across Latin America.  Back

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