Kenneth Michael Panfilio—1
Commodifying Survival: The Crisis of Water Privatization and the Need for Dignity
Abstract:
With worldwide water supplies beginning to dwindle as quickly as international
commercial markets emerge to regulate this precious resource, water promises to become a key
political cornerstone in the coming years. This essay explores the issue of water privatization
and its often-unreported impact on human life by examining the recent water protests in Bolivia
and explaining the phenomenon of water privatization as an act of global arrogance within a
growing corporatist governmentality. Concluding this essay is a move toward German Idealism
suggesting the need to work toward a dignity that respects our social relations. Accomplishing
such a task, as suggested in this essay, demands a deep, reflexive examination of how such
privatization efforts contribute to the creation of a weak democracy in favor of a strong
economy: a situation that is becoming more fashionable both at home and abroad. However,
hope exists in unpacking a historical moment in the development of the United States that allows
people to legally bind multinational corporations to an ethic respectful of its impact on
stakeholders as a first mechanism for securing such a dignity of our social relations.
Paper:
When the realities of free investment agreements, such as the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA), allow corporations to take legal action against governments in pursuit of a
stronger bottom line, life comes dangerously close to favoring profits at the expense of people.
A 2001 New York Times article reported that the Mexican government was ordered by a secret
international tribunal to pay $16.7 million dollars because it violated Chapter 11 of NAFTA, or
Convention