From Water Crisis to Water Culture

Fresh water has gone through some significant changes over the past twenty years. What once had been sold by the gallon as an emergency storm supply in grocery stores in the U.S. is now marketed by the pint by global corporations. Public water supplies are increasingly pressured to privatize their services as local fresh water sources are bought by these same companies, and global trade agreements and international development organizations increasingly promote the privatization of fresh water supplies. Dr. Vandana Shiva has been a leading voice in the efforts to defend local water rights and promote new forms of "public-public" partnerships to protect fresh water supplies. For this issue of Cultural Studies, Dr. Andy Opel interviewed Dr. Shiva about the connections between culture and water, how our cultural attitudes shape our water use and how we might change those cultural habits to ensure clean water for the future. Keywords: waterglobalizationwater cultureearth democracyprivatization Acknowledgements Andy Opel would like to thank Dr Michelle Laurents, Eric Welch and WVFS 89.7FM for their production assistance with this interview. Notes 1. Water privatization was the number one most censored story in 2000, according to Project Censored Project Censored [online] Available at: http://www.projectcensored.org/publications/2001/index.html [Google Scholar] [online]. 2. Glennon (2004 Glennon, R. 2004. Water Follies: Groundwater Pumping and the Fate of America's Freshwaters, Washington, DC: Island Press. [Google Scholar]), Barlow and Clark (2003 Barlow, M. and Clark, T. 2003. Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water, New York: New Press. [Google Scholar]), and Ward (2002 Ward, D. R. 2002. Water War: Drought, Flood, Folly and the Politics of Thirst, New York: Riverhead Books. [Google Scholar]). 3. See Vandana Shiva's ZNet Homepage Shiva, V. ZNet Homepage [online] Available at: http://www.zmag.org/bios/homepage.cfm?authorID=90 [Google Scholar] [online] and the Navdanya Homepage Navdanya Homepage [online] Available at: http://www.navdanya.org/ [Google Scholar] [online]. 4. For a brief description of the movement, see Chipko Movement, India Chipko Movement, India [online] Available at: http://www.iisd.org/50comm/commdb/desc/d07.htm [Google Scholar] [online]. 5. For more information on Haksar and this billboard, see Sharad Haksar Sharad Haksar [online] Available at: http://www.sharadhaksar.com/ [Google Scholar] [online] and India Resource Center India Resource Center 2005 'Coca-Cola threatens top Indian photographer with lawsuit' , [online] Available at: http://www.indiaresource.org/news/2005/1077.html [Google Scholar] [online].