The Price of Thirst: Global Water Inequality and the Coming Chaos by Karen Piper (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Price of Thirst: Global Water Inequality and the Coming Chaos by Karen Piper Cecile A. Lawrence THE PRICE OF THIRST: Global Water Inequality and the Coming Chaos. By Karen Piper. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 2014. Karen Piper’s new book should be on the short list of anyone concerned about crises affecting the continuation of life on the “water planet.” Piper writes beautifully, making her book easy to read quickly without losing sight of her important message. Her style crosses genres as she weaves from a journalistic to an ethnographic stance. Her background in post-colonial studies serves her well as she travels from region to region across the globe. She is able to see and grasp both larger histories, and also the implications of her conversations with individuals who are living without water or who are seeing their sources of water taken away or blocked from access—many times by a corporation that works with the government of a country that has abandoned its responsibility for the needs of its citizens. The six chapters of this book take us from California in the U.S., to Chile, to South Africa, to India, to Egypt, and finally to Iraq. Piper spent seven years pursuing this investigation, interviewing people who take opposing stances on water issues—those that are for and against privatization, portraying individuals who view water as a “good” to sell to the highest bidder, to put on a stock market in its own right, separate from corporations [End Page 135] that do the extraction and the bottling; versus those who view water as a “right” held in common, or a manifestation of the holy that should thus never be put up for sale. Carefully referenced with sometimes startling photos (not the least of which is the one “gracing” the book’s cover), the editing is well done. Piper collects yet more evidence, on the ground literally, to prove that now is the time for people to turn their backs on capitalism as it has been practiced since the start of the Industrial Revolution. But she is never dogmatic and never drowns the reader in numbers or statistics. Other books, articles, and reports have provided readers with massive amounts of numeric data. Piper’s appeal is to the heart, and to the importance of individual personal experience. This is one of the many ways that this book differs from that of others, such as Maude Barlow and Naomi Klein, in this burgeoning field of works about global crises. Piper’s approach is more like that of Vandana Shiva, who takes the stance that the political is personal and that all politics are local. Piper’s meeting with Vimla Bahuguna, to whom she dedicates the book, both literally and figuratively centers this work. Allied to the issue of access to water for drinking, cooking, bathing, washing, food production, etc., is, of course, the equally pressing problem of water pollution. While water pollution is not the focus of her work, as her center of attention is on global inequality in access to clean water, the issue of water pollution intertwines with the crisis of global water inequality. Pollution has occurred and continues to occur in countries where residents tend to be poor and powerless, as in many of the places Piper visited, away from the interest of Western media and thus from the residents of wealthy countries in Europe and the U.S. Piper chooses to begin with a visit to a site in the U.S. and ends with a visit to a site in Iraq—a country the U.S. recently invaded and occupied. These placements could form the basis for another extensive discussion. Piper hints but is never strident. This book is appropriate for a very wide audience, including community book reads and discussions as well as undergraduate and graduate courses in sustainability, Environmental Studies, Post-colonial Studies, English, Sociology, Philosophy, and especially courses with an interdisciplinary orientation. Cecile A. Lawrence Independent Scholar Copyright © 2015 Mid-America American Studies Association