Hugo Romero

Sociologist –Universidad de la Frontera, Chile - Unanimous Distinction.

Master in Social Research and Development – Universidad de Concepción, Chile - Outstanding Distinction.

Internship in Political Economy –Universität Kassel, Germany.

A Political Ecology of the HidroAysen Hydropower Project in Chilean Patagonia.

Supervisors: Gavin Bridge and Tony Bebbington.

Political Ecology, Social-Environmental Conflicts, Cultural Studies of Environment, Water, Dams, Patagonia, Qualitative Research.

My research is a contribution to the understanding of nature as a cultural construction, with special focus on struggles over resources and environment appropriation, as a result of knowledge and power relationships, and how they are represented in science, politics, and cultural events, among others. Discourses that order, rationalize, and naturalize the relationship between society and nature and allow material and symbolic transformation projects of human groups and ecological systems correspond to different forms of power exercise.

My overall aim is: To analyze the generation of a socio-environmental conflict in Patagonia from the HidroAysen Project. The specific objectives of the research are:
• To develop a genealogy of Chilean ‘Patagonia’ as a territory of contradictories meanings.
• To develop a genealogy of the HidroAysen project.
• To analyze current discourses about socio-environmental conflicts generated by the HidroAysen project in order to understand the political situation generated in Chile.

My argument is that the conflict generated by the HidroAysen Project in Chilean Patagonia, due to the clash of representations about this part of Chile -where the interests of the state, transnational companies, citizenship, environmental movement, and local inhabitants emerge from specific and distinct historical and cultural constructions- have allowed all these actors to have different and conflicting views about “what is” and “what should be” Chilean Patagonia. I am following the argument of social construction of nature, through Foucault’s contributions on knowledge and power, and the work of Bruce Braun, David Matless, and Peter Vandergesst & Nancy Peluso on how his approach has been introduced in cultural and environmental geography.

ROMERO, A. & H., ROMERO, T (2010). “Metabolismo y Contradicción entre las Inversiones de Capital y los Usos y Propiedad de las Aguas en Chile”. RED Waterlat, Universidad de Sao Paulo- Universidad de New Castle.

ROMERO T, H, ROMERO, A. y TOLEDO, X (2009). Agua, Poder y Discursos: Conflictos Socio-Territoriales por la construcción de centrales hidroeléctricas en la Patagonia Chilena. Anuario de Estudios Americanos. Vol. 66, Nº 2, Julio-Diciembre, 2009. Sevilla, España (ISI).

ROMERO T, H y TOLEDO, X (2009). El Conflicto por la construcción de centrales hidroeléctricas en la Región de Aysén en el sur de Chile. Revista Geográfica del Sur, Vol 1, Nº 1. Concepción, Chile.

ROMERO T, H; BARRIGA, O; HENRÍQUEZ (2007). Construcción de un índice de arraigo socio-productivo: hacia un concepto amplio de capital social. REDES- Revista hispana para el análisis de redes sociales Vol.13,#6, Diciembre 2007. España.