Disciplining water – risk, environmental politics, and the return of water infrastructure

This dissertation examines the social processes revolving around the evolving desalination industry (producing potable salt-water), by engaging themes regarding the political economy of resource extractivism, and the nature of environmental politics and policymaking in an age of dire climate stress. Specifically, the project theorizes the oceanic frontier as the latest trend in the abstraction of value from the environment, dispelling the notion that it is a sudden phenomenon impelled by innovation. The historical research describes how this came to be: the Cold War opened the oceanic commodity frontier during the pax Americana. Then, when technopolitical agendas stagnated, a mode of financial engineering called project finance was deployed. The desalination case is ethnographically extended to contemporary dynamics in California. Findings show how the private sector appeals to public water providers’ anxiety about water crisis. Community coalitions contest industry, but not always as the environmental sociological literature would predict. For example, while the media and private sector demonize community groups as “angry environmentalists” making “not in my backyard” claims, the conventional environmentalist disposition is, in fact, laissez-faire. Additionally, environmental justice (EJ) emerged as a core issue. Traditionally, the EJ frame is a key feature of successful mobilization against the uneven distribution of environmental problems. Findings indicate opposition groups make normative EJ arguments about the high costs of desalination, community disruption, and industrial burden. Contrastingly, organized labor and public sector actors align with the private sector to promote desalination, using a competing series of arguments about high costs of alternatives, local independence, regional responsibility, and employment that imply desalinated water is “just.” Disentangling these discourses clarifies how claims in favor of desalination inform a cooptation process, conceived within the financial framework of project finance that facilitates a class bias for a luxury commodity. Desalination is but one example of climate adaptation in need of sociological problematization. It reinstates the cultural hegemony of Capital, privileging infrastructure for water supply solutions. The investigation illustrates how water must be disciplined, just like rate-paying citizens and governments, to facilitate resource production, sale, and consumption. And yet, the state remains as ambiguous a site of engagement, as ever, being both a field attacked by private sector strategies, and one of possible emancipation from corporate interests through mechanisms of regulatory action.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Sociology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2022

Author dc:creator

• O'Neill, Brian F.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Gille, Zsuzsa
• Dill, Brian
• Marshall, Anna-Maria
• Poupeau, Franck

• Environmental Sociology
• Political Economy
• Climate Adaptation Technology
• Water Infrastructure Politics
• Risk

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2022 Brian F. O'Neill

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/117540

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F117540