Abstract

Juana Vera Delgado and Margreet Zwarteveen present the social and political struggles around water of peasant indigenous people from an Andean community in Peru. They look at how the community attempts to access, control and claim legitimacy for their rights to water when faced with a large and modern irrigation project. The community's struggle for legitimate existence based on access to land and water is deeply rooted in local cultural and customary norms and practices. The struggle illustrates how the contestation and counter-discourses of marginalized people are part of the 'alternatives to modernity' that are emerging with the globalizing water world.