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Abstract Over the past two decades, scholars have invoked E. P. Thompson's and James Scott's concept of a “moral economy” to explain how people mobilize notions of justice to make claims to water. We draw together 20 years of literature to assess the state‐of‐the‐art present in research on moral economies for water. We trace the historical foundations of the moral economies concept and its relevance to water; define the three basic components of a moral economy for water—(1) shared understandings of justice, (2) normative economic practices, (3) social pressure mechanisms—and provide examples of how they manifest globally. We then discuss how moral economies for water can cycle through four basic states—balanced struggle, intensified reaction, mass revolt, and collapse and dissolution—at different scales. We also explore the implications of the moral economies framework for key areas of current research on water: water sharing, water commons, water markets, and biocultural outcomes, and discuss the ways in which the moral economies framework dovetails with recent advances in water research, especially the economics of water and development. We argue that the moral economies framework is a powerful explanatory tool for understanding the relationships between ideas of water justice, economic behaviors, and mechanisms of social enforcement that complements other methodological approaches and theoretical perspectives. We envision moral economies for water as a field that can facilitate a range of norm‐based analyses of economic behavior and water justice, including across scales—from local to global—and in broad, integrative, multiscalar, and cross‐disciplinary ways. This article is categorized under:Human Water > Water GovernanceHuman Water > Value of WaterHuman Water > Rights to Water
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Plural Water Narratives: An Environmental Justice Lens on a Systematic Review of Q‐Methodology Water Research
ABSTRACT Environmental justice research has shown that people's experiences and perceptions of water differ because systematic inequalities shape the extent to which people access clean water and are exposed to water hazards. Q‐methodology is one technique that has been used to aggregate multifaceted subjective narratives and understand different perspectives on a topic. In this paper, we systematically review 77 case study articles applying Q‐methodology to water‐related topics, to inventory how people perceive their relationships with water. We create a classification system based on environmental justice theory to examine (1) distributive justice issues around alternative water sources and agricultural and urban water scarcity, (2) procedural justice issues around Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) and trust; and (3) recognition justice issues regarding misrecognition, underrecognition, and the intersectionality of the environmental justice principles. Notably, only eight articles in our dataset found just two factors on a topic, with most finding three or more factors, suggesting that most audiences are not polarized or opposed in a binary sense but range along a spectrum of perspectives on water issues. This finding means water conflicts are complex, but also that people may share core water values on disputed topics. Learning from people from various backgrounds can provide an understanding of the different relationships people have with water, which can help water managers predict where conflicts may occur, empathize with minority viewpoints, and innovate water solutions that could be used to advance environmental justice goals.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2222152
- PAR ID:
- 10584516
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley Blackwell (John Wiley & Sons)
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- WIREs Water
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 2049-1948
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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