Mobilization in Defense of Local Water Resources: Technology Movements, Rights-Based Ordinances, and Framing

• In Event: 254 - Section on Environment and Technology Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 13. Social Movements

Abstract

Over the last two decades, threats to regional and local water resources have been associated with nascent community mobilization in the in the United States. One manifestation of such activism involves opposition to large-scale water withdrawals by bottling companies. Such mobilization represents a growing type of technology movement that shares patterns of framing, recruitment, and tactics with community activism opposing hydraulic fracturing, land application of sewage sludge, natural gas drilling, and mining. Unlike equity movements that focus on securing rights to address long-term inequalities for particular groups, technology movements concern emergent, place-bound threats where the nature of risk is subject to technical or scientific assessment. Increasingly, technology movements are framing their objectives in terms of local control, and many sites of technology struggles have passed local “rights-based ordinances” (RBOs) in an attempt to balance the rights of communities with those of corporations. This paper uses the case of opposition to large-scale water-bottling operations in three New Hampshire communities to explore the role of RBOs in processes of framing, mobilization, and the diffusion of activism. The RBO approach resonates well with the scope of technological threats, and particularly in the context of New England, also aligns with citizens’ local sense of political agency. Together, these characteristics help to explain the powerful, and largely successful, anti-corporate activism that emerged across three New Hampshire communities.

Author

• Cliff Brown, University of New Hampshire