Abstract
State devices for water governance in Brazil have been strongly influenced by the development discourse, with the World Bank as the main multilateral institution that promotes it, whose guidelines converge towards the removal of state institutions from the role of providers of water services and promote the loss control over water by local populations. In this article, I analyze the trajectory of government policies for water management in Brazil from the institution of the National Water Resources Policy (NWRP) under the light of anthropological literature on large development projects, public administration and the self-declared field of anthropology of water, observing the process of creation and implementation of institutional devices that pave the way for the transformation of water into a commodity. The research was carried out through participant observation in an official evaluation of the NWRP and analysis of project reports from the World Bank.
Keywords:
water resources; government policies; major development projects; World Bank