Living Politics of Water

Catalog description

In this seminar we study struggles over access to water in the context of contamination from extractive industries, pollution from industrial processes, climate change and privatization. Struggles over water also include contestations over the meaning of water as a resource, a commons, a commodity, a human right, a living organism, sacred meanings embedded within worldviews which animate specific policy strategies, anti-capitalist tactics and indigenous resistances. We will learn about and from different social movements such as the Cochabamba Water Wars against privatization in Bolivia, struggles for access to water not contaminated by radioactive waste in Dine and Laguna Pueblo territories in the Southwest region of the US, opposition to the Narmada Valley Sardar Sarovar Big Dam Project in India, and others. We will also consider technologies such as the ancient qanat system of underground irrigation in Iran, Balinese water temples, and other technologies of living with waterways.