Hydrologic order: practices and institutions in Mendoza, Argentina

Abstract

This article addresses the territory of water resource management and proposes an analytical framework to study the inter-institutional relationships and practices of the stakeholders affected by the actions taken by those institutions. It explores in a preliminary and descriptive form some of the categories presented in the framework proposed for the specific case of Mendoza, Argentina. It identifies a double working dynamic in the hydrologic regime: one between the hydrologic authorities and large-scale and powerful stakeholders of the wine industry and another dynamic between a series of non-hydrologic satellite entities and small-scale producers. This leads to a hydrologic policy that reproduces a production model that clearly benefits one sector at the expense of another.