Ranked-out waterscapes
An ethnography of resistance and exclusion in a U.S.-Mexico border colonia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7858223 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Chilton Lee Tippin (0000-0003-0574-6912, University of Colorado at Boulder Cultural Anthropology, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2022-04-10 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Political Ecology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1073-0451 • E-ISSN: 1073-0451 |
| Publisher | University of Arizona (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2458/jpe.4868 |
| OpenAlex | W4214941382 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 22 |
In the U.S.-Mexico border region, an estimated 134,419 people live in United States colonias that lack access to water and/or sewer services. This article draws from ethnographic field research in one such Mexican-American community, where attempts by residents to move "decision-makers" to connect their community to water have for decades met a shifting resistance. Attention to water-infrastructure arguments at local, state, and federal levels reveals that this resistance ushers from bureaucracy and a deeply entrenched neoliberal logic. Access to basic water and sewer services is subordinated to strict ranking criteria, infrastructural rules and regulations, and funding metrics such as cost-per-connection. In response, residents have raised a counter-discourse, emphasizing their human dignity, needs, and basic rights to water. Thus, this article exposes a central tension in the political ecology of water: the neoliberal thinking that undergirds infrastructural violence in the "hydrosocial waterscape", and the strategies by which residents attempt to mobilize, to fight, and to push back
Bureaucracy · Dignity · Economic growth · Economics · Ethnography · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Anthropology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Public Administration · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Water Systems and Optimization · Ecology
Finding the Global in the Local
Advancing human capabilities for water security
Power, Nature, and the City. The Conquest of Water and the Political Ecology of Urbanization in Guayaquil, Ecuador
Water Matters
The household water insecurity nexus
(Re-)Conceptualizing water inequality in Delhi, India through a feminist political ecology framework
Measuring ‘no-win’ waterscapes
Suffering for water, suffering from water
Water and poverty in the United States
Water insecurity and emotional distress
For we are sold, I and my people
Neo-liberalism as creative destruction
The Political Ecology of Water
If No Gasoline, No Water
Traversing Boundaries
Citizenship Prepaid
Life in Debt
Infrastructural violence
Pressure
Traveling Technologies
An Anthropology of Structural Violence
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |