Water, Rhetoric, and Social Justice: A Critical Confluenceexamines how individuals and communities have responded on a global scale to present day water crises as matters of social justice, through oratory, mass demonstration, deliberation, testimony, and other rhetorical appeals. This book applies critical communication methods and perspectives to interrogate the pressing yet mind-boggling dilemma currently faced in environmental studies and policy: that clean water, the very stuff of life, which flows freely from the tap in affluent areas, is also denied to huge populations, materially and fluidly exemplifying the currents of justice, liberty, and equity. Contributors highlight discourse and water justice movements in nonofficial spheres from activists, artists, and the grassroots. In extending the technical, economic, moral, and political conversations on water justice, this collection applies special focus on the novel rhetorical concepts and responses not necessarily unique to but especially enacted in water justice situations. Scholars of rhetoric, sociology, activism, communication, and environmental studies will find this book particularly useful.

Casey R. Schmitt is assistant professor of communication studies at Gonzaga University.Theresa R. Castor isprofessor and department chair of communication at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside.Christopher S. Thomas isassistant professor in the Department of Communication at the College at Brockport.

Introduction: Stirring the Waters: Justice, Injustice, and the Springs of Rhetorical ResponseChapter 1: Water is Life: Shared DestiniesChapter 2: When Water is Energy: Tracing Mediatized Discourses in Chiles Mega-Hydro DebateChapter 3: Culture-Jam or Log-Jam?: Rhetorics of Spectacle Protest in the Free the Snake FlotillaChapter 4: Reimagining Dam Removal to Resist Settler Colonial Logics,Chapter 5: Water for the Community Good: Contested Meanings of Stakeholder Interests in Great Lakes Water Diversion ControversiesChapter 6: Kansas and the Ogallala Aquifer: Greenwashing Attempts to Balance Water Conservation with Free Market PrinciplesChapter 7: Naturalizing Environmental Injustice: How Privileged Residents Make Sense of Detroits Water ShutoffsChapter 8:Reviving Sister Water: Hydro-Anthropomorphism, Catholic Social Justice, and Pope Francis Eco-Rhetoric for the Care of CreationChapter 9: Copious Dwelling in a Sinking LandscapeChapter 10: Its All Childs Play: Flints Water Crisis, Environmental Justice, and Little Miss Flints Ephebic RhetoricsChapter 11: Environmental Crises and Hydrosocial Networks: Using Online Discontent to Promote Water Justice in ShanghaiChapter 12: Sun, Sand, and Satire: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Great Barrier Reefs Obituary,Chapter 13: Grievable Water: Mourning the Animas RiverChapter 14: Singing Across the Sea: The Challenge of Communicating Marine Noise PollutionChapter 15:The Human Rights of a River: Codifying the PosthumanChapter 16:Preventing Another Great Garbage Patch: Attuning to an Ecospheric Rhetoric