Technical Morality: Reflections concerning practices of exclusion and administration of water

reflexões sobre p´ráticas excludentes e administração de água

Abstract

Using examples drawn through construction practices in a field of action oriented by technical morality during the administration of water in Brazil, a set of concepts relevant for understanding the relation between State and local perspectives in a wide reach of activites are presented. The article discusses morality, reciprocity, redistribution, technical morality, adminsterred nsecurity, and different implementation timing along the history of the hydric resource administration on the São Francisco River. It discusses priorities of objectives, hierarchical relation and the State, identifies three different timings during the process of project planning and implementation (slow, rushed, and in flight), and discusses who those who implement these projects use tactics to dismount resistance, including demoralizing the impacted population, institutional metamorphosis, planned abandonment and bureaucratic incorporation in a context of planned neglect.  The principal argument is that State and adminstrating instituions operating government incentivated plans, projects and programs  are permeated by a reference to technical morality which comunicates a polarized distance between the government, on the one hand, and local populations, with considerable variabilty, that occupy secondary or disguised low priority in the plans, on the other.