Fighting for Water: Resisting Privatization in Europe – first reviews

My book Fighting for Water: Resisting Privatization in Europe (Zed Books, 2021) was published one year ago. From the successful referendum against water privatization in Italy, via the European Citizens’ Initiative on ‘Water and Sanitation are a Human Right’, to the struggles against water privatization in Greece and water charges in Ireland, I demonstrate why water has been a fruitful arena for resistance against neoliberal restructuring.

Since the publication, several reviews have been published, all available on the internet. This blog post brings them together.

In the book, I argue that there are three main reasons for why resistance against water privatization has been so successful: 1) the unique quality of water; 2) the long history of water struggles across different scales; and 3) the broad alliances of trade unions, social movements, environmental and developmental groups as well as citizens’ committees underpinning the struggles. Importantly, groups engaged in resistance were not only successful at preventing water privatization, as part of their struggles they also succeeded at creating new knowledge about how water can be managed differently.

The following reviews are available online:

Jill Robbie (2023) Critical Social Policy, Vol.43/1: 178-9.

Andrea Muehlebach (2022) Global Labour Journal, Vol.13/2: 269-71.

Adriano Cozzolino (2022) Italian Political Science Review, online first.

Caitlin Schroering (2021) Capital and Class, Vol.45/4: 608-9.

Vincenzo Maccarrone (2021) British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol.59/4: 1170-2.

Interviews with me about the book include the following: 

Europe Now, 18 May 2022;

European Public Service Union Podcast, October 2021; 

Faculti, 19 October 2021; 

Andreas Bieler

Professor of Political Economy

University of Nottingham/UK

Andreas.Bieler@nottingham.ac.uk

Personal website: http://andreasbieler.net

27 June 2022