Hydropolitics

Two cities, two battles. In the early 2000s a coalition of Vancouver activists scuttled plans for the private construction and operation of a water filtration plant in the Seymour watershed that provides fresh water to metro Vancouver. In Stockton, California, a similar alliance undertook a longer campaign to stop the contracting out of some of that city’s water services and wastewater treatment.

What do these cases tell us about clashes over privatization and the efficacy of social movements in such struggles? York University sociologist Joanna Robinson provides some answers. The published version of her dissertation, Contested Water: The Struggle against Water Privatization in the United States and Canada is explicitly scholarly. A reviewer therefore faces a choice between assessing it as the academic text it is aimed to be or as a trade book of general interest. The choice...