Who speaks for the future of Earth? How critical social science can extend the conversation on the Anthropocene

This paper asks how the social sciences can engage with the idea of the Anthropocene in productive ways. In response to this question we outline an interpretative research agenda that allows critical engagement with the Anthropocene as a socially and culturally bounded object with many possible meanings and political trajectories. In order to facilitate the kind of political mobilization required to meet the complex environmental challenges of our times, we argue that the social sciences should refrain from adjusting to standardized research agendas and templates. A more urgent analytical challenge lies in exposing, challenging and extending the ontological assumptions that inform how we make sense of and respond to a rapidly changing environment. By cultivating environmental research that opens up multiple interpretations of the Anthropocene, the social sciences can help to extend the realm of the possible for environmental politics

MULTI-LEVEL POLICY COALITIONS AN INTERPRETATIVE MODEL OF WATER CONFLICTS IN THE AMERICAS

ABSTRACT This article proposes an analytical approach to conflicts and policy-making related to urban water management based on multi-level policy coalitions. This is necessary to articulate four main issues. First, the repositioning of social and political struggles for access to water, along with policy variables. Second, the analysis of the effects of ecological transition, including climate change. Third, the reincorporation of these struggles and challenges in a multi-level approach. Finally, the enquiry into the apparent contradiction, in contemporary policymaking. The article proposes a definition of multi-level coalitions as collective preference systems that influence the content of policies (ideas/advocacy, decisions, policy tools) and their implementation, groups of actors that arise from engagement in policy issues. In the first section, the article presents the objectives of research on urban water management in the Americas, within the framework of which this analytical approach by multi-level coalitions is fashioned. In the second section, the article details four analytical issues. In the third section, it gives a definition of multi-level coalitions