The Struggle for Water
The Struggle for Water

Author: Wendy Nelson Espeland

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 1998-09

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 9780226217932

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Nearly fifty years ago, the Bureau of Reclamation proposed building a dam at the confluence of two rivers in Central Arizona. While the dam would bring valuable water to this arid plain, it would also destroy a wildlife habitat, flood archaeological sites, and force the Yavapai Indians off their ancestral home. The Struggle for Water is not only the fascinating story of this controversial and ultimately thwarted public works project but also a study of rationality as a cultural, organizational, and political construct. In the 1970s, the three groups most intimately involved in the Orme Dam—younger Bureau of Reclamation employees committed to "rational choice" decision making, older Bureau engineers committed to the dam, and the Yavapai community—all found themselves and their values transformed by their struggles. Wendy Nelson Espeland lays bare the relations between interests and identities that emerged during the conflict, creating a contemporary tale of power and colonization, bureaucracies and democratic practice, that asks the crucial question of what it means to be "rational."

The Southwest Under Stress
The Southwest Under Stress

Author: Allen V. Kneese

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-05-01

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1135432740

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Southwest Under Stress examines the development-environment conflict in the four contiguous states of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico. It emphasizes three issues with implications that extend far beyond the Southwest: water---its quantity, quality, and allocation; environment---how and to what extent it should be preserved; and the future of Native American and other poverty-stricken peoples. Energy comes in for special attention because the Southwest is a principal repository of fossil and nuclear fuels. This book serves as a guide for public policy in the region, and many of the policy alternatives set out are aimed at state and local governments. Alleviating poverty, improving the lot of Native Americans, and formulating workable water, environmental, and natural resources development policies are all of special concern to the region, but the federal government has asserted a dominant role in may of these areas. The book discusses ways in which the federal role may change to improve both federal policy itself and cooperation with other levels of government.

The Field of Water Policy
The Field of Water Policy

Author: Franck Poupeau

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-12-06

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 0429574738

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Bringing together the analysis of a diverse team of social scientists, this book proposes a new approach to environmental problems. Cutting through the fragmented perspectives on water crises, it seeks to shift the analytic perspectives on water policy by looking at the social logics behind environmental issues. Most importantly, it analyzes the dynamic influences on water management, as well as the social and institutional forces that orient water and conservation policies. The first work of its kind, The Field of Water Policy: Power and Scarcity in the American Southwest brings the tools of Pierre Bourdieu’s field sociology to bear on a moment of environmental crisis, with a study of the logics of water policy in the American Southwest, a region that allows us to see the contest over the management of scarce resources in a context of lasting drought. As such, it will appeal to scholars in the social and political sciences with interests in the environment and the management of natural resources.

Water and the Future of the Southwest
Water and the Future of the Southwest

Author: Zachary Alden Smith

Publisher:

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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Examines the water policy of the arid southwestern US from the perspectives of political science, economics, and the law. The 15 chapters discuss the political context and legal doctrines; the role of governments; and water allocation and other management issues.

Unsettled Waters
Unsettled Waters

Author: Eric P. Perramond

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2018-11-06

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0520971124

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In the American West, water adjudication lawsuits are adversarial, expensive, and lengthy. Unsettled Waters is the first detailed study of water adjudications in New Mexico. The state envisioned adjudication as a straightforward accounting of water rights as private property. However, adjudication resurfaced tensions and created conflicts among water sovereigns at multiple scales. Based on more than ten years of fieldwork, this book tells a fascinating story of resistance involving communal water cultures, Native rights and cleaved identities, clashing experts, and unintended outcomes. Whether the state can alter adjudications to meet the water demands in the twenty-first century will have serious consequences.