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NEW PUBLICATION: If you've wondered why and how so many people seem untroubled by the thousands of people affected #WaterAffordability crises, even if they're happening just down the road, this new publication from our #DetroitWaterStories team is for you. 1/22 THREAD STARTS
2/ Our chapter looks at the central issue of how everyday language and communication perpetuate environmental injustice and social privilege, when it comes to accessing vital natural resources like water, and dismiss the concerns and voices of those who don’t enjoy access.
3/ Basically, we show that privilege is both social and environmental. Not only does having #WaterPrivilege mean that you don’t need to worry about having personal access to water, it also means that environmental entities like water are devalued and treated as mere market goods.
4/ Undergrad and graduate @WSU_COM students helped collect and analyze the qualitative data - interviews with 46 Metro Detroit residents (25 Detroiters & 21 suburban in the tri-country area), who had not experienced the city's mass #WaterShutoffs, or even knew folks who did.
5/ So what did we find? First, there was rampant lack of awareness and misinformation about the #WaterAffordabilityCrisis although the shutoffs were only a short distance away, and suburban (not just Detroit) residents also struggle with high water bills. https://urbanenergyjusticelab.com/watersecurity/
6/ Moreover, even when participants were sympathetic, the frames used to make sense of the shutoffs and water affordability enabled them to deny the larger scope of the crisis, downplay victims' concerns and experiences, or support vague agendas with little specific action.
7/ The sensemaking frames used by participants included: emphasizing personal responsibility to pay water bills on time, contradictory ideas about the government's role, encouraging civic action (but with little specifics), and generalizing personal or neighborhood examples.
8/ We found that these sensemaking frames used by participants to understand #WaterAffordability was directly connected to what they perceived to be the broader role of water (or, what we call the "cultural discourses of water").
9/ But human beings' sensemaking is complicated. Rather than a clear-cut A-->B connection between specific cultural discourses of water and participants' adopted frames, we found that multiple discourses competed for dominance within the same frame.
10/ Also, the same cultural discourse had a "yin" and "yang" side, if you will, that participants drew upon, whether they believed water shutoffs victims were to blame or not. The 3 main discourses were water as: life-giving/dangerous, right/entitlement, and commodity/valuable.
11/ So, how does that work? Take the personal responsibility frame, which was widely used. Someone who says shutoff victims should "pull themselves up by their bootstraps and pay the water bill" actually does several things and makes key assumptions about the role of water...
12/ That statement centers individual ability, rather than structural gaps like racism or systemic poverty, and assumes paying water bills is easy if you merely save - ignoring that the bills are exorbitantly high because of decades of biased policy-making and judicial decisions.
12A/ Because that last statement is bound to elicit questions, here are some great resources to look up: @sheash1 wrote https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/liquid-utility/262537/resisting-emergency-management/; also @respbus https://waterequitydetroit.org/ ; and @WeThePeopleDet Community Research Collective https://www.wethepeopleofdetroit.com/community-research
13/ (Continuing...) But that privilege is also connected to at least two cultural discourses of water as right/entitlement and as commodity/valuable. Just as activists argue water is a fundamental right, opponents often counter that some folk feel entitled to free goods.
14/ When participants emphasized personal responsibility, they implied victims were entitled freeloaders. Similarly, when water access comes down to "paying the bill," water becomes just another commodity bought at the market (with $$$) rather than a valuable life-giving entity.
15/ I should point out that none of our participants were particularly "rich" - most reported household income less than $100,000, in fact - so it's hard to dismiss these findings as views held by an out-of-touch 10%. Nope, these were solidly middle-class folks, both B&W.
16/ Nor was it our goal to throw them under the bus, or point accusing fingers at folks who were kind enough to participate in our research. Rather, the goal - that I think we accomplished - was to show how environmental injustice is "naturalized" in insidious, everyday ways.
17/ Today, even as we (rightly) see renewed public attention on race, gender and class privilege, our research shows how privilege extends to how we think (or don't!) about the environment and vital resources like water. To further #EnvironmentalJustice we can't ignore privilege.
18/ There are important practical implications of this work. Understanding sensemaking frames that help maintain privilege will enable activists and policymakers to address constituents often opposed to the affirmative actions that environmental justice requires.
19/ For instance, tracing the frames that allow folks to see environmental injustice as “not my problem” or even as “inevitable” or “just desserts” can inform the design of campaigns or workshops that disrupt these frames, while emphasizing themes audiences can identify with.
20/ I wrote a blog post on the #DetroitWaterStories project website about this chapter (which was co-written with graduate students @KelseyMesmer and @moe__stafa) here that you are welcome to read. https://detroitwaterstories.wordpress.com/2020/05/29/new-publication-what-is-water-privilege-and-how-do-we-perpetuate-in-our-everyday-language-to-dismiss-the-problems-of-people-who-lack-water-access/
21/ The complete chapter appeared in print as part of this awesome edited volume on water, rhetoric and social justice, which has some other great research you should check out. #EnvComm #TeamRhetoric https://www.amazon.com/Water-Rhetoric-Social-Justice-Environmental/dp/1793605211
22/22 You can also download a pre-print version of our research from the Scholarly Products page of the #DetroitWaterStories project website. Thank you for your time reading this thread, and your feedback is greatly appreciated. https://detroitwaterstories.wordpress.com/work-products/scholarlyproducts/ END OF THREAD
