Industrialization of the Small Rivers: Connecting Neoliberalizing Nature to Marx's Subsumption Thesis Through the River Flow "Stored" for Electricity Production

Keywords: Small Hydropower, Neoliberalism, Nature, Subsumption of Nature, Run-of-River, Infrastructure, Water Storage
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 4

Abstract

Marxist scholars have long debated the changing relationship between nature and society under capitalist relations of production as well as under neoliberal regimes. Two lines of thought, "neoliberalizing nature" and "subsumption of nature" have been developed analyzing how the elements of biophysical world have been made resources for the commodity production. The neoliberalizing nature thesis focuses on the processes and relations, operates on the state, program and policy level, and investigates the cases of privatization, marketization, deregulation and market-friendly reregulation and more, whereas the subsumption of nature approach focuses on the nature-based industries, operates on the firm and sectorial level, and investigates "the industrial production".

This paper explores how neoliberalizing nature overlaps and complements the notion of subsumption of nature through a historical-materialist analysis of the use of river flow by small hydropower sector in Turkey. Drawing on a comparative study of the "run-of-river" type hydroelectricity plants built in 1950s by the state and built in 2000s after privatization of hydropower sector, it examines the emergence of water storage capacity and chained configurations in system design.

The paper discusses that neoliberal environmental regulations abstract river flow as an electricity resource ignoring its materiality and tend to overestimate it, and then specific biophysical characteristics of the river flow, its available geography, quantity, seasonality and content become constraints and obstacles that hydroelectricity firms need to overcome in their production processes. This political and industrial context caused the intensification of electricity production from the small rivers leading to their dramatic transformation.