A Vital Frontier: Water Insurgencies in Europe

In A Vital Frontier, Andrea Muehlebach explores how activists in Europe are organizing to protect water as a commons and public good against privatization. She argues that water is a political fault line at the frontiers of financialization and presents water protests as a vital politics that includes popular referenda, street barricades, demonstrations, and legal disputes. By exposing the commodification of water as the theft of life, Muehlebach shows that water-rights activists can successfully resist financial markets.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 06 June 2023
Publisher: Duke University Press

In her book "A Vital Frontier," Andrea Muehlebach delves into the compelling stories of activists across Europe who are tirelessly working to safeguard water as a precious commons and public asset, despite the encroachment of privatization. Spanning social, political, legal, and hydrological landscapes, Muehlebach situates water as a contentious political fault line at the forefront of financialization, highlighting how the relentless expansion of capital into public utilities is being fiercely resisted by an equally relentless and often successful insurgence of political organizing. Drawing upon extensive ethnographic research, Muehlebach presents water protests as a vital political force, encompassing a range of powerful tactics such as popular referenda, street barricades, massive demonstrations, the burning of utility bills, and legal battles over transparency and contracts. As Muehlebach meticulously documents, Europe's water activists articulate their own values of democracy and fair pricing, raising profound political questions about private versus common property, financing, liberal democracy, sovereignty, legality, and collective infrastructural responsibility in the face of financialization and commodification. Muehlebach compellingly demonstrates that water-rights activists possess the ability to successfully challenge financial markets by exposing the commodification of water as the theft of life itself.

Weight: 402g
Dimension: 152 x 229 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781478019831