Pittsburgh's translocal social movement: A case of the new public water

Rivas, Marcela González; Schroering, Caitlin

doi:10.1016/j.jup.2021.101230

Cited by 8 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…In this formulation, privatization is the outcome of a neoliberal class project (Harvey, 2005) to discipline water as a “resource,” while simultaneously disciplining governments for purported shortcomings (budget overruns, inefficiency, and bureaucracy). Furthermore, neoliberal policies and the privatization of municipal water services have been criticized in a variety of contexts in the Global North and South (McDonald, 2018; Roberts, 2008) because privatized water disproportionately impacts the poor and working classes through rate increases and failure to actually deliver on contract promises (Hailu et al, 2012; Rivas and Schroering, 2021). Cataloguing the neoliberal privatization surge, geographer Karen Bakker has shown that from 1990–2010, private investment in water infrastructure ballooned from nearly zero to thousands of millions, with hundreds of new projects across the world emerging in wastewater treatment, canals, and desalination (2013: 254).…”

Section: The Social Structuring Of Environmental (In)justices Neo-lib...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Water for whom? Desalination and the cooptation of the environmental justice frame in Southern California

O’Neill

2022

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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The environmental justice frame is a key feature of successful grassroots mobilization against the uneven distribution of environmental problems. However, what happens when this discursive framework is questioned, that is, when features of its established definition are made to serve, rather than contest, industry? The article examines this dynamic through an ethnography of a high-volume desalination (potable ocean water) proposal. Findings indicate community groups and non-governmental organizations make normative environmental justice arguments about the high costs of desalination, community disruption, and industrial burden. By contrast, organized labor and public sector actors align with the private sector to promote desalination, using a competing series of arguments about local independence, regional responsibility, and employment. Disentangling these discourses, the author argues that claims in favor of desalination are a part of what this paper calls a cooptation of the environmental justice frame that ultimately facilitates community division in favor of a class bias for a luxury commodity. Interpreting this socio-ecological problem through a political economic lens, this research contributes to discussions about industrial infrastructure conceived within public–private partnership frameworks, calling scholars, activists, and decision-makers to attend to how environmental (in)justice politics can take on surprising meanings amid the expansion of financial capitalism.

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