Water, Rhetoric, and Social Justice: A Critical Confluence examines how individuals and communities have responded on a global scale to present day water crises as matters of social justice, through oratory, mass demonstration, deliberation, testimony, and other rhetorical appeals. This book applies critical communication methods and perspectives to interrogate the pressing yet mind-boggling dilemma currently faced in environmental studies and policy: that clean water, the very stuff of life, which flows freely from the tap in affluent areas, is also denied to huge populations, materially and fluidly exemplifying the currents of justice, liberty, and equity. Contributors highlight discourse and water justice movements in nonofficial spheres from activists, artists, and the grassroots. In extending the technical, economic, moral, and political conversations on water justice, this collection applies special focus on the novel rhetorical concepts and responses not necessarily unique to but especially enacted in water justice situations. Scholars of rhetoric, sociology, activism, communication, and environmental studies will find this book particularly useful.
Introduction: Stirring the Waters: Justice, Injustice, and the Springs of Rhetorical Response Chapter 1: Water is Life: Shared Destinies Chapter 2: When Water is Energy: Tracing Mediatized Discourses in Chile's Mega-Hydro Debate Chapter 3: Culture-Jam or Log-Jam?: Rhetorics of Spectacle Protest in the Free the Snake Flotilla Chapter 4: Reimagining Dam Removal to Resist Settler Colonial Logics, Chapter 5: Water for the "Community" Good: Contested Meanings of Stakeholder Interests in Great Lakes Water Diversion Controversies Chapter 6: Kansas and the Ogallala Aquifer: Greenwashing Attempts to Balance Water Conservation with Free Market Principles Chapter 7: Naturalizing Environmental Injustice: How Privileged Residents Make Sense of Detroit's Water Shutoffs Chapter 8: Reviving Sister Water: Hydro-Anthropomorphism, Catholic Social Justice, and Pope Francis' Eco-Rhetoric for the Care of Creation Chapter 9: Copious Dwelling in a Sinking Landscape Chapter 10: It's All Child's Play: Flint's Water Crisis, Environmental Justice, and Little Miss Flint's Ephebic Rhetorics Chapter 11: Environmental Crises and Hydrosocial Networks: Using Online Discontent to Promote Water Justice in Shanghai Chapter 12: Sun, Sand, and Satire: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Great Barrier Reef's Obituary, Chapter 13: Grievable Water: Mourning the Animas River Chapter 14: Singing Across the Sea: The Challenge of Communicating Marine Noise Pollution Chapter 15: The Human Rights of a River: Codifying the Posthuman Chapter 16: Preventing Another Great Garbage Patch: Attuning to an Ecospheric Rhetoric
