TEMPORALITIES AND UNCERTAINTY IN THE CONTEXT OF A WATER CRISIS IN THE PROVINCE OF CÓRDOBA, ARGENTINA

Abstract

From a social anthropological perspective, and based on a multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork, in this article I analyze a diversity of socially constructed temporalities in the context of a water crisis in Sierras Chicas, province of Córdoba, Argentina. I start with the description of the social importance of water in terms of its value as accumulated labor, (expressed, for example by the supply and distribution infrastructure), in order to analyze different situational contexts where a diversity of temporalities that give meaning to the society / environment relation are creatively shaped. Some of these temporalities are based on the daily experience of water scarcity, others on conflicts between developmentalism and long term spatial planning, while others in a kind of utopian visions. I conclude that these temporalities are ways of dealing with the uncertainties of the future, in a present of profound socio-environmental changes.