Water thieves

Abstract

The use of tropes is a defining feature of resource regulation and is fundamental to both the way legal theories have evolved and to the practical, localized interpretations and implementations of law. This article offers a discursive study of the "water thief" trope in order to clarify the ways in which language users are able to perform and construe broader notions about individual and communal rights to water. I underline the palpable shift from a conventional law-based account of theft to a logic incorporating key characteristics of criminality and immorality. The study builds on critical discourse analysis to show how the water thief trope creates a new water world in which "water thieves," although technically not criminals under formal law, are created and made to matter.

Keywords

• environmental crime
• tropes
• discursive resources
• water appropriation
• environmental governance
• law