Rivers of Scarcity. Utopian water regimes and flows against the current
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Keywords

political ecology
utopia/dystopia
water justice
water governance
social movements
environmental justice
riverhood
commons
commoning
water struggles

How to Cite

Boelens, R. (2022). Rivers of Scarcity. Utopian water regimes and flows against the current. Alternautas, 9(1), 14–53. https://doi.org/10.31273/an.v9i1.1152

Abstract

Utopians organized space, nature and society to perfection, including land and water governance -- rescuing society from deep-rooted crisis: “The happiest basis for a civilized community, to be universally adopted” (Thomas More, 1516). These days, similarly, well-intended utopian water governance regimes suggest radical transformations to combat the global Water Crisis, controlling deviant natures and humans. In this essay I examine water utopia and dystopia as mirror societies. Modern utopias ignore real-life water cultures, squeeze rivers dry, concentrate water for the few, and blame the victims.

But water-user collectives, men and women, increasingly speak up. They ask scholars and students to help question Flying Islands experts’ claims to rationality, democracy and equity; to co-create water knowledges and co-design water governance, building rooted socionatural commons, building “riverhood”.

https://doi.org/10.31273/an.v9i1.1152
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Copyright (c) 2022 Rutgerd Boelens

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