This review essay investigates Andrea Ballestero’s A Future History of Water, Jeremy Schmidt’s Water: Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity, and Wade Graham’s Braided Waters: Environment and Society in Molokai, Hawai’i within the wider theme of water-human relationships. More specifically, these books provide insight into the human dimensions of water management as they explore the process of how water impacts and drives economic, social, and political change. By doing this, Ballestero, Schmidt, and Graham highlight water’s agency and (...) the vital role it plays in a variety of locations and situations. Broadly speaking, works like these help move water beyond discussions limited to ecological science, giving this resource a starring role in crucial discussions ranging from policy and economics to community development and social equity. In this regard, environmental issues are holistic matters that must engage cultural, economic, political, and religious dimensions as well as ecological issues. Collectively these books show that water’s fluctuating nature dictates the structure of our world, permeating every issue from the daily to the global while reinforcing the need to look critically at this life-giving resource. (shrink)

This review essay looks at Christopher Boyer’s Political landscapes: forests, conservation and community in Mexico,, Thomas Miller Klubock’s La Frontera: forests and ecological conflict in Chile’s Frontier Territory, Pablo Lapegna’s Soybeans and power: genetically modified crops, environmental politics and social movements in Argentina and Elspeth Probyn’s Eating the ocean as each provide a holistic study of how political ecology and marginalized peoples engage the issue of natural resources in Latin America. Through they deal with different regions and a wide range (...) of approaches to management, collectively they shine light on the social interactions that accompany changes in the land and how local communities engage issues surrounding nature’s use. On a larger level, they offer readers more insight into the field of the environmental humanities and what it means to live with the land. (shrink)