The Environmental Impact Study as an Element of Reality Construction. The Case of Porce III Hydroelectric Station

The present work analyzes the environmental impact study of the Porce III hydroelectric power station, built in the 2000s in Colombia, from a sociological perspective, more specifically in relation to the social impacts’ treatment. This “management of the social” is understood as a government apparatus: an arrangement of lines of visibility, enunciation, power, and subjectification by means of which the behavior of the resettled populations is oriented. The paper particularly approaches the first group of lines. The data came from both the documentary analysis and the professional work experience of the researcher in the studied resettlement. The researcher submitted the information on existing regulations, justifications of the company and its financiers, environmental studies and management measures to an interpretative analysis in light of the theoretical reference’s categories. The study allows identifying that the construction, definition, and delimitation of a specific reality are brought about by means of instruments, discourses, and techniques of the environmental impact study. Once companies established that reality, they manage it while making viable the business of power generation. The research argues that other realities with higher levels of democratization can be constructed to regulate the interactions between communities, companies, and the State in defining forms of territorial appropriation.