Scarcity amid abundance: Navigating the waters of neoliberal austerity in Detroit

Abstract

This article explores water politics, neoliberal austerity measures, and racial capitalism in contemporary Detroit. I detail how a city campaign of mass residential water shutoffs, begun in 2014 and effecting tens of thousands of Detroit households, has served as a weapon against poor communities of color to produce economic outcomes favorable to corporate creditors and political elites. I argue that an analysis of water politics in contemporary Detroit allows for a more nuanced understanding of how neoliberal urbanism produces its own distinctive structures of racial and gendered oppression—not class domination alone. Drawing on fieldwork with city activists and other residents impacted by water terminations, this article analyzes how capitalism has relied on race to validate myriad expressions of violence, capital accumulation, and dispossession. I submit that water is a resource whose provision and denial provides a lens through which to ascertain who is and is not regarded as fully human in the context of the neoliberalization of racial capitalism. This piece also details innovative ways in which water rights activists and other Detroit residents have resisted authoritarian water policies and crafted survival strategies to persevere in the face of abiding threats to their health and human rights.