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Caitlin Schroering, "Global Solidarities Against Water Grabbing: Without Water, We Have Nothing" (Manchester UP, 2024)
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- [00:00]
Marshall Poe
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- [00:51]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
So good, so good, so good.
- [00:54]
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- [01:47]
Michael Johnston
Hello and welcome. My name is Michael Johnston. This is another episode of New Books in Sociology, a channel on the New Books Network. Today I have Dr. Caitlin Turing with me, assistant professor of Global Studies and affiliated faculty of Sociology as well as Latin Studies at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. And today we're going to be talking about global solidarities against water grabbing. Without water, we have nothing. Published by Manchester University Press in 2024. Welcome, Caitlin, and thank you for being on the show today.
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Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here and talk with you a bit.
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Michael Johnston
Excellent. So this water grabbing and global solidarity is against water grabbing. Could you tell me a about how you decided to write on this topic? How you Decided to not to be funny, but dive deeper into this topic.
- [02:39]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Sure, absolutely. I think I'll try to give you kind of the shorter answer because I think in some ways this wasn't the topic that I envisioned would be my dissertation that then became a book. I first kind of learned about what I call water grabbing and I can circle back to that definition for those unfamiliar in a. In a minute. But I first learned about that in 2008 when I was in Brazil for the first time for a study abroad program. And there also in the context, right of thinking about like bottled water and multinational corporations appropriating that and commodifying it and selling it. I don't actually think I knew or was using the term water grabbing at that point, but thinking about this topic. And then I came came back to the US and was involved on campus with campaign to ban bottled water on campus and like organizing a screen film screening of flo. But then actually really moved away from explicitly like environmental issues or water after graduation and was actually I worked as a community organizer around other like social justice issues in Jacksonville, Florida for several years and then decided I wanted to go back to school to study how do social movements organize. And for my. For my master's was looking at kind of the role in role of actually like the Catholic Church in organizing and being involved in socio environmental movements in Brazil. Ended up deciding I wanted to focus on social movement studies specifically for a PhD. Ended up in Pittsburgh at University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh. And right after I got there really the news of the lead crisis broke. So like my own home tested at 100 parts per billion for lead in the water which is like really really high. Anything over 15ppp the EPA says needs remediation and arguably there's no safe level. And so I was involved and got involved in water justice organizing there Clean Rivers campaign and then our water campaign. And then it just started to make sense that all this shit, this is really important, right. Water is at the core of like all of these other socio environmental issues. And especially at that moment like sociologists weren't really talking about it. I was like I think this is what I'm going to do. And yeah, I can. We can circle back to how then the Brazil piece got tied in but I think I've that's long enough of an answer so I'll stop there.
- [05:21]
Michael Johnston
Yeah, that's very interesting. You know a basic physiological need, but it's not just a need for water but a need for clean water and for all people to have access to Clean water. And I think you go in pretty great depth with that in terms of how water is distributed across the world and. How it even fits into this little hierarchy among who gets clean water and who doesn't. So it's a needed area of research, and I'm glad that you're doing it. But to start off with you, you mentioned this concept called water grabbing and it being an urgent sociological issue. So first off, what is water grabbing? And why should it be something that we as sociologists study?
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Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Right, yes, great question. And I'll say, right. I think maybe more people listening perhaps are familiar with the term land grabbing. And so we can think about water grabbing as kind of like being the same as that, just talking about water. And so a very, like, simple definition would be water grabbing is appropriation of water by capitalist and by. By capital. Right. And we can think of it as a part of kind of like capitalist crisis expansion or the idea that we're commodifying things like water that are basic necessities for life in the attempt. Right. To accrue more. Accrue more. Make more capital. Right.
- [06:53]
Michael Johnston
So a form of colonialism or a form of territoriality, of taking. Taking stuff that should be a basic. Well, a right. A lot of rights. Yeah.
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Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Or. Right. And we can also. And we can get into distinctions of the difference between rights. Right. In the commons, but another form of enclosure of the commons. And. Absolutely. And it's a theme throughout the book that, yes, this is tied to ongoing forms of colonialism to further kind of define what I mean by water grabbing. So a definition that really, really helped me actually tie my cases together and, like, make my argument more concise is definition of water grabbing by Andrea Spieler. And so he argued that there are five main forms. So the first is, right, privatizing drinking water. Right. Like municipal drinking water. Another form is bottled water, which is, I think, kind of obvious. Right. But again, I can talk more about the dynamics of that in case it isn't. Another form is large hydro dam constructions. Another form is water, like for extracted industry. So again, thinking about water for mining and that in many places, including in Brazil, that water for extractive industry and hydro dams, they're closely tied to each other. And then the fifth form, right. Like water for large scale agribusiness, monoculture kind of agro business. And then he added to that definition in an article with Madeline Moore, I think in 2023, a sixth form, which is the financialization of water. So again, we think like trading water as a commodity on Wall Street. And so that sixth form, of course, is very connected to those five other forms. So thinking of water grabbing in this form is what allowed me to kind of tie what some might argue. Well, you have disparate and in fact. Right. Committee members did argue. Well, you have disparate cases here. Pittsburgh, where it was more struggle, specifically around privatizing municipal drinking water. And then in Brazil, where all the forms are kind of wrapped up in it, but more explicitly around the hydro dams and I think. So that's water grabbing. Right. Now you had a second part of your question which is like, why it's an important sociological matter.
- [09:20]
Michael Johnston
Yes.
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Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Yeah. I mean, so maybe I'm now at a point because the book's out where I can kind of give this answer. I remember wanting to say it a lot as a PhD student. I was like, I can't say that I want to be like, well, because we die without it in three days, we die without water. Right. I think in a very simple way, like, it matters because it. It matters. It. It points to how we exist and live in the world, how we structure social relations. It shows where there is injustice and inequities. You know, I think it's. It's urgent because of that. But I think to give an example that came. That various people in. In slightly different words shared with me during my field work, and it's where the subtitle of the book comes from that I actually wanted to be the title. Without water we have nothing. Is that right? We can't exist without water in a. In a. And we also can't actually exist without like energy. And in a place like Brazil, the connection between that water and hydro energy, that link is really visible. I think here it's a little bit less so. But under. Looking at water helps us better understand both how kind of the political economy, but also the. The social movement resistance to that and how ultimately it's a struggle to redefine, reclaim, reimagine the commons, some cases or at minimum, right to think about water as something that is basic to human existence, that shouldn't be profited off of. That is a right. That is not a commodity. So, yeah, I think it's a. It's a super important sociological matter. And I. I think it's in the preface. Somewhere in the book I tell this story of how early in my field work I was at a. I was at ASA and had a conversation with someone who does work on water. And this person told me, like, yeah, I. You know, really, I continue to have to make my case for why water matters. And it's so puzzling to me. And that was a really affirming moment because it was like, okay, it does matter. Right. And I think there has in the past decade been a big shift. I think more people, including more sociologists are looking at water or talking about water and unfortunately, because. Right. It's also in the face of climate change, that issue of too much water in some places and scarcity, else. It's just amplifying these already existing dynamics.
- [11:41]
Michael Johnston
And I think it tells a lot about a people group if you watch how they interact with water, everything from baptism and water to playing in water swimming, like at a local lake or at the ocean or at one of these great water parks that we have here in the United States where people are interacting quite differently. And to people who are camping and putting water in some sort of a vase and then boiling the water to have drinking water as compared to buying it at the local store in a bottle that might be infused with something to give more energy than what it would normally be. But the interaction with the water that people are consuming or using to cleanse themselves with is very telling about a people group.
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Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Yeah, I think that's such an important point you make because I also think, right. We often, and in the context when we're talking about how like the, the political economy of defining water grabbing. Right. Or thinking of it. Right. As a form of appropriation by capital. But there's so many other values that water has. Right. It's not just the economic, it's the spiritual, it's the cultural, it's. It's all of those things you named in so many more across time and space. Right. It's water is viewed, was and is. Right. Viewed as, I mean, sacred by so, so many. I mean, I think in different ways, kind of all cultures. Right. So, yeah, really interesting to think about that.
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Michael Johnston
And that just as a segue to this concept and its ability to help us understand broader social structures like dispossession, inequality and global capitalism. How does this concept of water grabbing help us do that?
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Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Yeah, so thank you for that kind of follow up. And I think actually to be a little more specific, I'm actually, if it's okay, going to read a little bit from what would be chapter two, where I'm specifically kind of unpacking what water grabbing and water privatization, what those concepts are. I'd love for that.
- [13:51]
Michael Johnston
Yes, please.
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Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Okay, great. So I write, and this is. Yeah. Starting at the bottom of page 29, which is the first page of chapter two. That the concept of water grabbing is useful because it helps us to understand how seem seemingly disparate processes are in fact intimately connected. A part of the problem of understanding the interconnected crises caused by capitalist expansion is the tendency to study each part as discrete. For example, lack of access to clean water for all is viewed as separate from the crisis of climate change, which is seen as disconnected from inflation and rising cost of food. Yes, there are differences, but in essence, all of these problems are connected because the same forces are driving them with catastrophic results for all life. We must understand these problems as interconnected and caused by our socioeconomic system. This chapter connects the local to the global, providing context and understanding of the fight for the right to water in the United States and how that fight is like in Brazil, a struggle between competing worldviews. I won't read all of that. I'll jump down a little bit and say that water, like air, is necessary for life more so than other resources. It is often ostensibly under public rather than private control. The drive to privatize, however, continues, making water a new quote, frontier for capitalist expansion. And then. Yet, from the analysis of the movements with whom I work, the root of the problem is capitalism is a sociopolitical economic system, even as the particular forms neoliberalism and austerity measures that come with it, speculative finance that financializes water compound and worsen its extraction capacity. And a little bit later, I get into a little bit more of kind of that conversation of like recapping the six different types of water grabbing that I already noted to you. So I won't repeat that, but I think, you know, happy to kind of circle back to that. But it's basically showing how this, you know, the struggle against the privatization of water or water grabbing in all of its forms, is linked, as we already talked about a little bit, right, to the move to, quote, unquote, enclose and commodify water. And so when we think about water grabbing, which again, appropriation of water by capital, maybe to give a little more definition to that right, we can think of corporations, but it's also governments often working with corporations or sometimes even individuals who are trying to assert and claim the control and distribution of water. And then we have people who are resisting and fighting back against that. So then it's kind of the idea that it's like the globalization from above and globalization from below and how, I think, as Ramachandra Guha put it, that the forms of domination shape the resistance, but the resistance also can shape, like the forms of domination.
- [16:55]
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Michael Johnston
Edu I see to use a concept by Gary Allen Fein, the hinge. I see water as being somewhat of a hinge that connects the micro to the macro. The interconnectivity of nations hinge upon the use of water. But also you can use water to better understand micro communities like he did with Little League baseball, right? Or using baseball as a hinge or chess as a hinge, or a Master's of fine arts, but in this case water. And looking at how people unite through water, but also how water is very telling of a much more macro global world.
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Dr. Caitlin Schoring
I like that. I'm not actually familiar with that term, but I'm going to have to check that out. I like that. Yeah, I think that fits for sure.
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Michael Johnston
And then one of the things that I was hearing is we don't need to talk about disposition or inequality necessarily because they are all subcomponents of global capitalism. And to be able to understand disposition and inequality from what I heard from your reading is all you have to do is look at global capitalism. Is that an accurate understanding?
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Dr. Caitlin Schoring
I mean, I think that I want to be so I think that. And maybe this gets into what will come up in the conversation later, right? I don't think we can just look at global capital, right? Because I think that dispossession and it's all connected, but it can happen in different ways in different forms. And I think that also when we're thinking about global capital, right? And dispossession, we also can't look at kind of that, that macro, that structure, that class analysis without also looking at race and gender and geographic location and these other pieces that I think are very, very critical as well. And I guess I'll also say. Right. I think in some ways, part of what I. And I think I hope I succeed with this in the book to show is that it's not just looking at the global capital and the violence and horrors of that dispossession that's occurring, but actually looking at all of the resistance and all of the change and all of kind of the almost micro moments of hope that are happening too. Because I think we also, like every. We know how horrible things are. I think most of us do. Right. But, like, how do we also look at it from a lens of the resistance? Not just what is like is happening, but how. Like the hopeful pieces too.
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Michael Johnston
So, yeah, that's a great connection to this next question that I have about your book as it's about. Global solidarity is a major theme. And I think that without solidarity, without some sort of a community, we cannot have otherness and we cannot have extraction of goods and unequal distribution of those resources like water. So I think that global solidarity is a great central theme. So what were some of the solidarities that you observed that formed against water grabbing?
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Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Yeah, great question. So I think I'm gonna introduce a term here that isn't in the title of the book because I think it was too. It would've been too almost like niche. Right. I wanted the title to tell you what this is about and not be. Not cause people to go, what is that?
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Michael Johnston
A bunch of jargon? A bunch of, like, mumbling that the insiders know, but the outsiders know so much.
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Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Exactly. And I think. And, you know, I'll. So the term. Right. Is trans local. And I think increasingly so this is a term that has been used by a variety of scholars and activists for decades. So I don't claim to be, like, creating this term, but I do think within social movement studies and kind of within social movement studies in the US and certainly applying it to thinking about water organizing, it hadn't really been used. And I really went back and forth with, okay, does it make sense to use this term versus especially if. Right. Engaging with transnational social movement studies and to use this term over transnational. But as I, you know, I tell my students in teaching sometimes. Right. I think as scholars, we do need to think about how can we make our language more accessible Sometimes we maybe don't need to be coining a new term or using a different term. But sometimes. Right. Words matter. And a new term like it, it matters. And so I think here this term translocal is where it becomes really relevant. And so I start the first or second page kind of defining it and then circle back to it and again, different people have, have used this term. I'm working more explicitly with the, the concept and definition of trans local as well as trans local learning networks from Bobby Banerjee. And and this was a term that, right, really was originally used to describe in particular kind of indigenous organizing and indigenous communities. But what I'm. So I'll just read this. So through examining water based social movements, global solidarities against water grabbing, without Water we have Nothing explores how individual movements are frequently a part of larger movement communities. Thus they are examples of trans local movements in which people, citizens, residents, activists, movement actors engage with each other, the state and the market to fight for community driven partnerships, communal ideas of property rights versus private property rights, and for participatory democratic and horizontal governance structures. And so one of the things that I think, you know, this term trans local does is it kind of captures how these movements are globally focused and their analysis, right, is that this is a global crisis of, you know, corporations seeking to, to water grab. And so the resistance also has to be organized and global. But at the same time that these movements are rooted, I mean case in some cases of like Pittsburgh are very locally rooted local targets or in the case of Brazil, very local. But also it's a part of a national movement that in turn then has these global international ties. And to give I guess, two specific examples of this. So one I'm going to give is actually just a phrase that's frequently used. It kind of informs so much of the, yeah, I guess of the thinking and the work of Mabi. But is todos tomos attendidos, right. Which literally, like the best way to translate it is like we are all affected, but specifically, right, we are all affected by dams, by climate change, right. By extractivism. And there is an understanding, right, that how like I'm affected differently by that than someone displaced and pushed off their land by a dam. And so it doesn't try to say, well, everyone's affected equally, but but speaking to we are all affected, like we all have more in common with each other than. And I mean this is my language here and I actually don't use it in the book, but like then the 1%, right?
- [25:07]
Michael Johnston
Yeah.
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Dr. Caitlin Schoring
And I think to give another example that is the focus of chapter six and to bring in kind of another kind of another case, another Example of water organizing against privatization in Nigeria. But there was a Human Right to Water summit held there in 2019, and Nigerian organizers, in solidarity with movements and organizations from around the world, organized this. And the reason was there was a threat to privatize the water system in Lagos, Nigeria. And one of the kind of contenders for that was Veolia, which is. Which since then has merged with Suez. So it's the largest water privatization firm in the world, Multi billion dollar company. And so our water campaign in Pittsburgh got invited to participate in this space along with campaigns and movements from all over the world because of their failed experiences with public private partnerships. Right. So the details of exactly what that struggle looked like in Pittsburgh was different than Flint, Michigan, or different than somewhere in India or somewhere, you know, all these different places in the world, but all had the shared experience of, okay, Veolia had a part in privatizing or. Or a public private partnership. Our water, Our water quality got worse, the prices went up. Right. What all the studies show kind of what happens when water is privatized. And so it was to come together and say, yeah, we're here in solidarity with you. We want to share why it didn't work out for us, and we're here to help you, in solidarity, organize so that this doesn't happen here. And so that's what I call like a trans local learning network that often happens in these and formal spaces of a meeting, like that of a summit of I can talk later about the people summit that just happened in Brazil, but that work continues during. After these moments where people are physically together, that work continues. And so I think that the term translocal helps capture how there are these, you know, differences. But ultimately, right, there's this understanding that we have to organize and work together, because that's what Nestle's doing, or Coca Cola or Veolia. And I'm just naming those. There's plenty of others. Right. So social movements have to do the same.
- [27:34]
Michael Johnston
I think what I'm hearing is like, yeah, there's differences in positionality and how you see the world around you, but there are intersections that. That exist across the people where they have a common goal. A common goal, that would be a good word. And it bridges the divides of class, geography, and political context to build this larger transnational coalition in order to mobilize resources that otherwise wouldn't be available. When we're talking things like class divides or geographic divides from one nation to the next.
- [28:11]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Exactly. Or even information divides. Right. And that can go multiple ways. Right. That we're all in different places getting pieces of information, different angles of that information. Right. And so, yeah, that it's the knowledge sharing and information sharing, too.
- [28:28]
Michael Johnston
Yeah. So when you dug deep and decided to turn your dissertation into a book, what were some of the approaches that you used to trace such a vast and interconnected phenomenon? I mean, this is existing all over the world and to capture all of this knowledge and to connect it all together. What are some of the methods that you use to make this happen?
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Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Right. Well, I think probably in terms of both methodologically and theoretically, I'm in some ways pulling from a lot of different strands, which might make some not like what I'm doing especially. Right. I think in interdisciplinary work, this is and has been more common, I think. Right. Within disciplinary frameworks and in particular, including, like, social movement studies as kind of. Especially within the U.S. right. Maybe less so. But I mean, I think what I want to start by saying is my. My methodological framework, which I also think my methodological and theoretical, they're very right, like, bound up in each other, but came from the fact that I came into. I came into this work from being engaged in social movements and being an organizer in social movements. And so I think it's okay to kind of take so really from that place of praxis that it's okay to take different pieces that make sense from different theories and different methodological approaches, even if maybe those, you know, two theorists or two different methodological approaches might be seen as, in some ways, not like, working together. But I think we often can take. We can learn things Right. From different approaches. And so I don't. My brain doesn't really like binary thinking. And I think that's like, the simple almost response to your question.
- [30:19]
Michael Johnston
But I think you have something going. I mean, you already have street cred coming into it. You were already a person who was doing activism. And there's something about just doing it without getting caught up in all of this conceptualization or theorizing or whatever it might be, but instead just being. Writing something in plain English and being able to communicate what it is that you are seeing and what you are involved in. I think as academics and as pure academics, pure academics sometimes get too caught up in speaking academician, whereas practitioners or applied sociologists, they know what's going on around them. I think that was maybe the foundation, in my own words, of how Chicago schools and places like that came around.
- [31:11]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Yeah, I really appreciate all of what you just said, and I. Yeah, I think that it resonates and I maybe just to share another. And I, I think in different ways. Do I talk about this in the book or maybe I should know right offhand, but it starts to blur together. I think maybe it's in. In the appendix. But how. You know, I really, really struggled when I was first starting this work because all my. My brain was constantly like, nope, you're not doing this right. You've got to like, how do you do this if you're also engaged with. If you social movement participant, like, you have to be more objective. Right? You have to. And, and then as time went on and in particular, right. I mean I learning and growing with all of the movements and campaigns I was doing work with. I don't want to say that I didn't that that my own growth and how I thought about it wasn't affected by my work within the US Too. It was. But I think and rightfully, understandably, a lot of campaigns and social movements in the US they're really skeptical of like, of a researcher. Right? Or. And. And it was only because I had all this other experience in movements first. It's like, okay, sure, like, yeah, you can have these two roles and I get it right? There's been a lot of it like extractivism that has happened. Right. But part of my learning journey. And this goes back to even the theme of how the book became. It's about water. But this book is also very much about knowledge production and my own understanding and growth of knowledge production too. And knowledge production with movements was that in my work in Brazil, I had more examples where there were scholars who this kind of dual role. It wasn't.
- [32:52]
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- [33:50]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Yeah, I had almost like role models doing this and it was like, oh, wait, it doesn't have to be this horrible tension. I can do both. The key is I've just got to be like, you just have to be reflexive about it. Right. Be transparent about it. And I think all scholarship needs to be that. And it was also through that journey then that I started to learn about and get exposed. And this is ongoing. Right. If I was writing this book today, there would be different scholars I would cite or focus more on, and probably ones I wouldn't use. And I think it remains the case that, like, the canon were taught needs some work. It's. There's a lot of methodological nationalism that the canon in social movement studies in the US is very US centric and very Right. There's also all of these scholars from outside the field of sociology but still doing social movement scholarship that we need to learn from. And so it was even after I was actually done with the dissertation and writing the book that I learned about other scholars, you know, and I'm thinking about like, Aziz Chaudhry, right. And for me, like, the work in the different field of education, but Rebecca Tarlau and her work with the Landless Workers movement in Brazil and kind of like, you know, she makes a point in an article about how like, no social movement, like, needs a scholar to come study them. Right. But that she continues to believe, and I continue to believe too, that there is a way to be in solidarity with and kind of do some of that work of like, translation of information and concepts.
- [35:19]
Michael Johnston
Yeah. You know, when I go out and I study people and I ask them questions, they think they're just doing life. And what I find them doing is quite strange. But, you know, to them it's very familiar. And I think that carnal knowledge is important to be able to shift from one site to the next site and to be able to, like with Louis Quant and his study on it wasn't about boxing, but it was about the interrelations that are taking place in the boxing ring as amateur boxers getting to know, well, getting to know the people, getting to know the environment, getting to know the community and which one is a part of.
- [35:57]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Of. Yeah, yeah, yeah, like that.
- [36:01]
Michael Johnston
So I guess, yeah. Are there particular theoretical lenses that you used across the disciplines that helped you guide your analysis of water grabbing and resistance?
- [36:14]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Yeah, and maybe I already started to veer into this a little bit. And yeah, not to repeat myself, but right As I noted, I think for me, and increasingly so. Right. I think part of the process of writing the book and turning the dissertation into a book was that it became, it's like, right. Like I don't have to completely say this is like my methodology and then this is like my, you know, theoretical approach. Like, I can kind of talk about these more in connection with each other and, you know, so they're interlinked. And I think, well, I did already name this, that this book is about water, but it very much is about knowledge production. And so it's about my own role, tensions, contradictions, kind of actions as a movement participant, militant academic, whatever word I want to use there, a scholar, activist. And I think that, you know, in terms of like theoretical approaches, I mean, one of the. Again, when I started this work, I wasn't really explicitly thinking about the work I was doing as feminist or anti colonial. But then I started to realize, oh, but that actually is what it is. And I think to kind of unpack that a little bit. Right. Because I think maybe even within the academy, this term feminism or a feminist approach can be, you know, I want to make sure we're kind of working with the same like, definition. And so, like, for Hannah Sultana, who is a water scholar, geographer, and I really like the way she talks about her feminist approach. And for me it really resonates with like how I see my approach, which is that it's working to overcome biases in research, which in some ways. Right. Is often even just naming what the absences are and saying, yeah, like this is an absence to see that that research is a part, also a part of a larger kind of goal for social change to kind of include human diversity, you know, for forever. Right. You know, the kind of the norm, right. Quote, unquote or default has been like this white CIS man from, you know, the so called global North. And so, so, like challenging that challenge, you know, acknowledging my own positionality as a researcher, because we all, in our own way are going to bring our own biases based on our positionality and how we walk through the world. And so instead of hiding that and pretending like, no, this work can be neutral, you know, it has to be acknowledged. And so I think related to that, and this is also something that Sultano talks about is like thinking how these systems of oppression of, you know, around class, race, gender, geographic location, they matter because we live in a world that historically and still in the present, like those things have shaped. And so, yeah, like how are capitalism and imperialism and colonialism and CIS heteropatriarchy, like, are connected.
- [39:24]
Michael Johnston
How the different experiences inform our. Inform the research that we conduct and how we go about doing it. Is that that kind of what I'm hearing?
- [39:32]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Yeah, I think so. And it's. And I talk about this a little bit in the book too, how like one of the themes that really came up in my work, in my work with. In our water campaign that led to then getting to participate in the water summit in Nigeria and especially. Right. Obviously in my work with Mavi, which is a movement based in Brazil. Like I am based on my positionality. Like, certain things are going to be more highlighted to me. And one thing I talk about specifically is this theme of like global solidarity and internationalism. And that isn't to say that that isn't a really key, important part of the movement. It is. But there's other pieces that are really important too. If I was a scholar doing the same project or, you know, who was from Brazil or you know, had an identity different than I do, maybe different pieces would be lifted up. And I think sometimes we maybe try to, we want to like, write something or have a research project that like, covers everything. And that's like, that's not possible. Right. For so many reasons, but including that. It isn't to say that, you know, what I write about and the themes I focus on, that, those aren't that. That isn't based on like a rigorous long process of research. They are. But I'm also right, what I'm seeing, that's shaped by who I am. And we just, just like, that's not a. I think. Yeah, we can't hide behind that. And I love this. So Florestan Fernandes, who was a Brazilian sociologist and also, you know, very important to social movements there today, including Mabi and the Lendless Workers Movement. And he wrote an article in the 80s that basically translates to like, for the sociologist, there is no neutrality. You are either on the side of the exploiters or the exploited. Or you could translate translated as like, the oppressors are oppressed. And I think for me, right. That informs how I. My, like a lot of my theory as well, you know, as my methodology. And I think that's especially true when we're doing work with. Yeah. With social movements.
- [41:45]
Michael Johnston
Yeah. Like, it makes me think. Or something like that or like a value free. A value free sociology, you know, is it possible? And, and no, I don't think it's possible. But I think at best we can recognize our position that we hold and make Use of it as part of our cultural toolkit.
- [42:05]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think, I guess I'd say too, if you want a less rambly answer with more details and more theorists cited, read the book.
- [42:14]
Michael Johnston
Read the book. Yeah, exactly. And that's the other piece that I was thinking of. As you talk about, not only would you go and do the research different today, if you were to go conduct it, because different things are happening, you can never step your toes in the same stream twice, or whatever you want to call it, if you want to call it. But the book also develops its own identity as different readers read it. They might pick up on things that you didn't necessarily pick up on when you read your drafts before they became final.
- [42:41]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Yeah, that's a great point. And I mean, maybe even, I guess this also I just thought of it, but it circles back a little bit, I guess to the methodology piece too. But it's like. And I talk about this a little bit bit, but it's like starting a project or for a new project. I would actually like save interviews for the end. Like do all the participant observation, observant participant first and then interview. And you know, that's not how it worked. I. It really moved to be more a project around observant participation with some. Some of my interview data included. But it's like it depends on your pro. It certainly depends on the project. But for my project. Right. It would have made more sense, I think, to do those interviews at the. Because you know more about what you're doing and what questions to ask, where the gaps are, what information you need to fill in. But also like, it takes. You don't build relationships overnight. You don't build trust overnight. So I think it's just also interesting to think about. Yeah. What. Like what is gained, but also what the absences might be from a project that's more based on interview data versus Right. Like participant observation, et cetera.
- [43:55]
Michael Johnston
The interview part kind of brings closure to the field work. It can be used as a form of verification of. This is what I see. Did I really see this? Is that what was going on and really bring closure to certain things that you picked up on in the field? So this being said, what do you see as a future of global resistance to water grabbing? Where do you see this topic going, especially in a time in which we continue to face climate change and resource scarcity?
- [44:29]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Yeah, well, I have, I have. I guess what I hope is maybe can also be like a bit of a. A hopeful answer because, you know, things are pretty Pretty rough for all of the horrors and injustices, I think of the world and of history, they're all kind of being revealed, they're all being amplified right now. And I had the opportunity was very hectic, but grateful it could work out to be in Brazil for close to two weeks in November. And so I was there for two things. The first was what was called the fourth International meeting of people affected by Dan. And then the People Summit, which probably is maybe, maybe has been more talked about, heard about and the big people's march that happened in Belem du Para. So these were two kind of social movement spaces. So the fourth international meeting was before the people summit adjacent to COP 30. Right. And yeah, I won't get into all the kind of absences and problems and as I think a lot of the social movement critique and I agree kind of false solutions being advanced at COP 30, but two things to highlight here. So my kind of ongoing work right now is really focused on the role of popular education in organizing climate justice movements and climate change. Climate justice has been kind of a theme or a pillar of mambi's work work for a long time, but recently it has really, really shifted to be kind of the main focus because there's no way for it not to be. When we think about horrific, horrific flooding that occurred in Rio Grande do Sul in 2024. And I mean on a scale that I think it's hard to under conceive of, like water staying 30ft for a whole month and not receding. Right? But we look, look, it's like the whole country of Brazil has been on fire, is burning. I mean all of the, right now horrible, devastating floods that have been occurring throughout Asia. I mean it's, it's everywhere, right? And so what the fourth International meeting did, it was a place, it actually brought together people from other over 40 countries, five continents. And it was basically the launching of kind of a new movement, so extending kind of the name dam. So MABI in Portuguese, right? It's People Affected Movement of people affected by dams. And it is a part of a movement by the same name, but in Spanish, of movement of people affected by dams. But that is a part of movements throughout the Americas, but over the years has been organizing with movements in Europe and in Asia and in Africa and in Oceania. And so this meeting that just happened was a really historic meeting because it represented actually, actually announcing the name that it's Movement of people affected by DAM socio Environmental Crimes and the climate crisis. And so deeply. Right, Linking all of those things that they can't be separated and also that we need kind of this massive scale of people, even though, again, the particularities of the struggle are different in Thailand than they are in the Democratic Republic of Congo, than they are in Brazil, than they are in the US us But that there's also. Right, we are, again, it's back to this. We are all affected. And so I. Yeah, when I decided a couple years ago that my next project was going to be kind of looking at popular education and climate justice, I wasn't exactly sure where that was going to go and did have the opportunity to participate in this meeting space. And so then that group of folks from around the world, as I said, from five continents, but also, you know, people from all over Brazil, there were over 1200 people. It was one of the largest delegations to the People Summit. And so I think it was a really powerful, hopeful space also as it was filled with so much grief because both things are true. And so I think what I see is kind of the future is that, yeah, water. And I guess it's been interesting to kind of think too, like now I'm in a moment of reflecting back about things I wrote in the book and things that I think held true or that are changing. And you know, I think I've talked about and even talked about here is water kind of being the entry point or struggles against water grabbing is the entry point to thinking about how all these things are connected. And so I think now, end of 2025, and to think about this global movement that Maabi has been a key part of creating. And even just that name shift. Right. Like what that represents that. Yeah, all these things are so connected. I think in terms of how we organize or even thinking about how we organize here, things are rough. I think we are seeing what I would call fascist tendencies and turns in many places of the world. It's not just here that we're in that moment. Movement. And so. Right. Also an intense criminalization of social movements. But I think. Right. If there's one thing that's true is despite that, people keep organizing. And yeah, I have a little bit more to say in terms of kind of looking ahead or wrapping up, but maybe I'll stop there and if we have time, I can say it. If not, that's cool.
- [50:22]
Michael Johnston
Yeah. So that being said, what is it that you're working on? Unfortunately, we are out of time for any more additional questions, but I do want you to take that time to add to this and this final question that I ask all of My guests is what are you working on now? And maybe this is where you can get into that of are you working on your next book? Are you reflecting and doing more activism? What does this look like for you today? And, you know, moving forward into. Into the next few months.
- [51:00]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Yeah. So one thing is working to get the book translated into Portuguese, which, you know, isn't necessarily, unfortunately valued as, like, academic labor in our system. But that's really important. And for me, for that to happen soon so that people in Brazil can read it. I'm a part of a collaborative project and we have a short article out looking at the role of, like, basically looking at waste, colonial and again, the need for a global lens because, like, what happened when all, you know, we remove lead pipes from the ground here, which is great, and it's an environmental justice victory, but where do they go? Well, the answer is they go somewhere else. Right. And they kind of. They lead poison, black and brown children in other parts of the world. The final thing. And then maybe a more hopeful note. So back, right. To what I mentioned about kind of my work on popular education, climate justice. I hope, I think it will become another book. Right now I'm thinking about it more as some articles, but I think it's like, you know, this very much connects to my various forms of organizing that aren't a part of my research as well. I don't think liberation or change is going to come from inside the university, but I think we can and must still try to carve out liberatory spaces and organize together in those spaces. But also think about spaces is outside right of the formal institutions of education to do this work of popular education, political formation for struggles for climate justice, et cetera. And I think, because a big piece of this, right, is we. It's like, I mean, it's Gramsci's idea, cultural hegemony, like, things keep going the way they are because we believe and we believe they can't be different. And so I think one of the things that continues to give me hope and that I continue to think about how to bring back more of that here into the US US from movements, from my work in Brazil in particular, is like, how do we do that work of imagination, of imagining how things could be different, of creating those spaces in the present and having the hope that they can be, whether we see it in our lifetime or not? And I think. Right. That's also. It's kind of how I end the book because I think. And I tell my students this too.
- [53:18]
Michael Johnston
Right?
- [53:18]
Capella University Advertiser
Right.
- [53:18]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Like, regardless of what you think is wrong or what you think should be different. If we cannot imagine something different, we cannot create it. And so I think part of what we can learn from other places in the world, too, is that sometimes, right, to, like, have despair is a privilege. So how do we, even when it seems so hard, keep imagining, keep building together, keep creating in the present, right now, in small ways, something different. And knowing that, like, whether our work is, as a scholar, as an organizer, all the above. This is work that spans generations.
- [53:58]
Michael Johnston
Excellent. Well, I appreciate the work that you're doing. And, yeah, keep fighting the good fight. Right? The closed hand of solidarity of early worker unions and things like that, of people just coming together and trying to create changes in sex and gender and race and ethnicity. We talk about Rosie the Riveter and others who have come together throughout history to create change. And the only way that true change can come about is individuals coming together to create it from the bottom up. There's no other way. And if it is coming from something else, it's probably a false change to lead to some sort of a false consciousness.
- [54:43]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
This.
- [54:43]
Michael Johnston
But thank you. And thank you for this book and the opportunity to have you on the show to talk about this with our guests who are sure to go for a ride as they read through this book and hopefully become knowledgeable on things that they previously never even thought of. So thank you.
- [55:00]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Thank you so much, Michael, for inviting me. It's been wonderful and I appreciate all the words you just ended with. A thousand percent to all of that.
- [55:09]
Michael Johnston
All right. Well, this has been another episode of New Books in Sociology, a channel on the New Books Network. And Today we had Dr. Caitlin Schoring on the show to talk about her most recent book, Global Solidarities Against Water Grabbing. Without Water we have Nothing by Manchester University Press, 2024. Have a great day, you.
- [55:46]
Marshall Poe
And Doug. Here we have the Limu imu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [56:02]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Limu is the that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [56:04]
Marshall Poe
Cut the camera. They see us.
- [56:06]
Michael Johnston
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty, Liberty, Liberty.
- [56:10]
Dr. Caitlin Schoring
Liberty Savings.
- [56:11]
Michael Johnston
Very underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts.