What might it take for politically marginalized residents to challenge cuts in public spending that threaten to harm their health and wellbeing? Specifically, how did residents of Flint, Michigan contribute to the decision of an austerity regime, which was not accountable to them, to spend millions to switch to a safe water source? Relying on evidence from key interviews and newspaper accounts, we examine the influence and limitations of residents and grassroots groups during the 18-month period between April 2014 and October 2015 when the city drew its water from the Flint River. We find that citizen complaints alone were not sufficiently able to convince city officials or national media of widespread illness caused by the water. However, their efforts resulted in partnerships with researchers whose evidence bolstered their claims, thus inspiring a large contribution from a local foundation to support the switch to a clean water source. Thus, before the crisis gained national media attention, and despite significant constraints, residents’ sustained organization—coupled with scientific evidence that credentialed local claims—motivated the return to the Detroit water system. The Flint case suggests that residents seeking redress under severe austerity conditions may require partnerships with external scientific elites.
This article develops the concept of territorial stigma by analyzing how it can be cultivated at the level of political institutions across administrative divides. I consider the case of Detroit's regional water department, which until 2016 was owned and operated by the city and served over 120 suburban regional municipalities. I start by examining the cooperative city–suburban water system expansion in the 1950s and then analyze the rise of Detroit's first black‐led administration in 1974, after which the water authority became a key regional institution that provided an opportunity for white suburban leaders to organize against the city. I find that suburban leaders advanced their immediate goal of mitigating rate hikes by declaring the city to be greedy and inept, instead of acknowledging structural conditions that increased operational costs. This had the effect of reproducing racialized stereotypes at the political level, which had enduring effects. The argument builds on the existing literature on territorial stigma by (1) identifying state institutions as sites for the propagation of stigma and (2) considering stigmatized places in relation to their non‐stigmatized neighbors. The analysis integrates material‐structural and cultural‐symbolic factors in order to understand the perpetuation of regional urban inequalities.
Forest industry engagement and co-option of forest certification schemes for market advantage also needs discussion. The new governance framework outlined in this book will prove useful in understanding the continuing debate and negotiations among key stakeholders in global forest policy and management. Privatizing water: governance failure and the world's urban water crisis, by Karen Bakker, New York, Cornell University Press, 2010, xvi þ 303 pp., index, £42.95 (hardback), ISBN 9780801447235, £16.50 (paperback), ISBN 9780801474644
How did informal garbage collectors, who had long provided the only door-to-door and recycling services in Delhi, manage to survive the introduction of formal garbage collection trucks? This question raises the larger problem of informal institutions—well-organized and socially recognized, but legally unauthorized and unregulated platforms for political and economic organization—have proven so persistent. I draw on evidence collected during 20 months of ethnographic research in Delhi, focusing on participant observation with informal collectors during their neighborhood routes and interviews with 50 informal collectors. Bringing together political and urban sociology, postcolonial urban studies, and institutional theory, the paper frames competition over city garbage and recycling as a relational matter. I argue that informal workers preserved their jurisdiction through practical legitimation, depending on everyday actions and social expectations rather than explicit laws or beliefs to secure legitimacy. I demonstrate how status-based relations, here based on caste and labor migration, can confer legitimacy and provide a source of regulation, as actors set out and meet implicit expectations for appropriate actions, relationships, and social boundaries.
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