Leila Harris, Chad Staddon, Amber Wutich, Jessica, Budds, Wendy Jepson, Amber L. Pearson, and Ellis Edjei Adams published a guest editorial in Political Geography titled “Water sharing and the right to water: Refusal, rebellion and everyday resistance”.

In this commentary we draw attention to water sharing as political, highlighting the stakes and concerns around such practices. We engage a broad definition of politics, capturing everyday acts and practices that might be interpreted along a gradient ranging from mundane and banal forms of resistance, to refusal, to more obvious and visible acts of rebellion. Explorations of water sharing frequently touch on, but do not often fully explore, the deeper political implications of these acts. Our contribution is thus to explore the politics, both explicit and implicit, related to diverse acts of water sharing. We suggest that water sharing offers a diagnostic of, and a challenge to, power geometries embedded in dominant hydrosocial relations. While some acts of water sharing may not be attention-grabbing or overtly political, we argue that attention to these instances is nonetheless important for understanding the broader political geographies of refusal, rebellion, and everyday resistance. Relevant to historical and emerging debates on society-water relations, our analysis of water-sharing practices also highlights key contestations related to the human right to water and its possibilities. 

Harris, L. M., Staddon, C., Wutich, A., Budds, J., Jepson, W., Pearson, A. L., & Adams, E. A. (2020). Water sharing and the right to water: Refusal, rebellion and everyday resistance. Political Geography, 102245. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102245

Subscription access to publication available here.