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Copyright of Immaterial is the property of BAU, Centro Universitario de Diseno de Barcelona and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article examines the origins of national electrification in Chile, situating its technocratic promoters within a broad trend – unfolding across Latin America – toward the 'rational' management and conservation of natural resources by the state. It surveys the early history of Chilean electrification (1890s–1940s) to show how conservationist thinking flowed through discussions and debates among engineers about the proper uses of the country's waters. These ideas eventually shaped the 1943 national electrification plan, which focused on hydropower. The article sheds new light on the history of Chile's technocracy, the relationship between perceptions of the environment and development planning, and the political and economic debates over national electrification. It also shows how the conservationist dilemma of using versus preserving natural resources operated within a utilitarian and highly technical framework for thinking about nature's bounty. The article thus contributes to recent historical scholarship on conservation and environmental technocrats in Latin America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between water infrastructures and the identity dimension of citizenship. By combining concepts from urban political ecology and Foucault's work on governmentality, this paper offers an analytical framework of hydro-social regimes of water access, which acknowledges both the material and discursive dimensions of urban infrastructures. This framework is used to analyse water access in the self-built neighbourhoods of Antofagasta, Chile. It is argued that urban infrastructures are crucial to the identity construction of urban dwellers as citizens, as they produce subjects with a particular sense of social belonging. This paper thus contributes to debates on urban infrastructures and citizenship in the context of self-built housing on the urban periphery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this comment is the systematization of the environmental regulations of the Chilean constitutional project and to raise some problems in its implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective/Context: This paper studies the role of the Chilean state during the great drought of 1967-1969 as a mediator between human beings and nature. Institutional adaptations and the effort to improve the infrastructure were elements of continuity with respect to previous droughts, but there were novelties as well, such as attempts to pursue weather modification and the artificial melting of glaciers. The support of technologies and scientists operating from peripheral state institutions was essential for these purposes. All the above took place in the context of the Cold War when the predominant environmental imaginaries made human intervention look favorable and necessary for the modernization of countries. Methodology: Diverse primary sources were used, such as ministerial documents, decrees, bulletins, and reports of different state institutions that allowed understanding the logic of state management during the water crisis. Similarly, research in national and international press helped identify how imaginaries about the environment were expressed and disseminated publicly, which tended to validate novel efforts to control nature. Originality: This is an original study for Latin America, which addresses the early appearance of science and technology in the efforts of what today would be known as geoengineering: mainly through the observation of new actors, which expanded the traditional forms of mediation between humans and nature, led by the state, concerning climate crises. Conclusions: In the 1960s, optimism grew for the human capacity to control and manipulate water resources by appealing to ways other than those previously known, associated with infrastructure development. Expert knowledge was placed at the service of peripheral institutions of the state to promote these changes with lasting consequences. The human desire to control nature at all costs was validated, which helps explain the temporal projection of experiments with artificial rain and glacier control to the present day in Chile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of URVIO - Revista Latinoamericana de Seguridad Ciudadana is the property of FLACSO - Ecuador (Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Literatura y Lingüística is the property of Universidad Catolica Cardenal Raul Silva Henriquez and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

En este trabajo se examina si la patente por no uso de derechos de aprovechamiento de aguas implementada en Chile en 2005 ha incentivado la utilización de las aguas sin uso. Se analizan descriptivamente dos comparaciones: patentes cobradas respecto de recaudadas y precio de mercado de derechos comparado con el cobro de patente. Se observa que en los sucesivos procesos de cobro de patentes, la recaudación aumentó del 67% en 2007 al 81,4% en 2009 respecto del total cobrado. Además, se determinó que varios años de pago de patente equivalen al precio de mercado de los derechos de aguas. Se concluye que la patente no ha sido eficaz en desincentivar el no uso, puesto que los propietarios tienden a pagar lo cobrado para no perder derechos cuyos precios de mercado superan a los de las patentes. Asimismo, se sugieren algunas mejoras al diseño legal del instrumento. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]