"This book is a fascinating and passionate ethnography of 'popular activism in local symbolic spaces' of Salvador, Brazil, and Buenos Aires, Argentina... [V]aluable for its comparative ethnographic account of how activists struggle with other non-state actors and state authorities regarding water in two port cities... [Kane's] ethnography tells a story that is passionate, insightful and moving, revealing the difficulties and contradictions that environmental movements face when confronting entrenched and powerful actors." - Journal of Latin American Studies, November 2013 "This is an important interdisciplinary work that uses a place-based approach to examine human relationships with water in the context of globalisation... [T]he detailed explorations of the human propensity to continue to engage in devastating practices with water, and whether social and environmental justice movements can do anything about these practices is insightful...[W]hat Kane has to say is worthwhile; she illuminates the struggles that lay people face in getting juridical institutions to implement the law to protect waters in a precautionary manner." - Environmental Politics "[A]n engagingly-written ethnography on the legal and cultural dimensions of water... Kane's analyses shine when they are grounded in the cultural history of place... Many of the issues, current and long-standing, that she examines find bedrock in these histories that give the stories their uniqueness of place in a globally connected world. The few words here cannot capture the thoughtful cultural analyses that occur throughout this book. The images provided by the author add welcomed dimension to the stories told." - Contemporary Sociology, May 2014
