Introduction: the Fluid Crisis
Chapter 1: Cultures of Water Governance
Chapter 2: White Privilege and the Canadian State
Chapter 3: Common Sense Water Reform
Chapter 4: The Neoliberalism of Nature
Chapter 5: Reproducing the Racial Formation
Chapter 6: Re-investing in Whiteness
Chapter 7: The Science of Neoliberal Racism
Conclusion: Racism without Responsibility
Michael Mascarenhas is assistant professor in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and an Andrew Mellon Foundation Fellow.
[This book] provide[s] valuable grist for the mill of critical
scholarship that is attempting to meaningfully theorize the complex
nexus of water, space, nature, and capitalist dynamism. The fact
that geographers, environmental historians, anthropologists,
technology theorists, and others are increasingly engaged in this
task means that . . . [this book] will be sure to spark the
interest, and merit the attention, of a growing interdisciplinary
scholarly community.
*Dialectical Anthropology*
The great strength of this book is that it systematically names and
explores how neoliberalism is a racial formation highlighting not
simply how water policy disadvantages First Nations communities but
also how concomitant water practices privilege the environmental
and social conditions that most white Canadians take for granted.
Overall, Mascarenhas illuminates how environmental racism is
produced in a contemporary Canadian context through neoliberal
water governance operating under racial logics that continue to
privilege mostly white communities. The author challenges the
common stereotype that poor water services on First Nations
reserves are simply “their own fault.” In contrast he unpacks how
neoliberal discourses shape access to clean water in ways that
ensure Indigenous communities have limited control, and that
normalize sustained underinvestment by the federal government.
While some technical aspects of the book (a thin index and
typographical errors) are a minor concern, Where the Waters Divide
makes a significant contribution to theorizing the relationship
between Indigenous exclusion and white privilege, and should be
considered an important achievement. This book would be appropriate
for courses in globalization and economic life, Canadian studies,
environmental issues, critical race theory and Indigenous
issues.
*Canadian Journal of Sociology*
A general awareness exists about the extent to which neoliberalism
over the last thirty years has systematically undermined an array
of public services from education to health care in North America
and elsewhere. Where the Waters Divide reminds us that
privatization and deregulation are similarly enfeebling our ability
to protect natural resources. The case of fresh water in Canada
exposes the social dimensions of emergent scarcity crises and
presages the difficult struggles that will be at the heart of
sustainability governance in coming decades.
*Maurie J. Cohen, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Editor of
Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy*
Michael Mascarenhas looks under the hood of neoliberal water
regulation in Canada to reveal the connections between this
ideology’s supposedly colour-blind prescriptions for economic
growth and efficiency and the deepening racial inequalities they
produce—above all, for aboriginal communities. This book is an
urgent plea to non-native Canadians to “see” the environmental
racism that is rooted in the colonial origins of this country and
that the last thirty years of neoliberal governance have only
worsened. Where the Waters Divide is a critical read for scholars
of environmental and indigenous politics, and for those engaged in
water policy debates, as well as a call to action for environmental
justice.
*Laurie Adkin, University of Alberta*
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