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ARS Home » Pacific West Area » Maricopa, Arizona » U.S. Arid Land Agricultural Research Center » Water Management and Conservation Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #385888
Research Project: Increasing the Utility of Turf in Urban Environments of the Southwest U.S.

Location: Water Management and Conservation Research

Title: Red, white, and blue: environmental distress among water stakeholders in a U.S. farming community

Author
item DU BRAY, MARGARET - Hollins University
item QUIMBY, BARBARA - Arizona State University
item BAUSCH, JULIA - Arizona State University
item WUTICH, AMBER - Arizona State University
item EATON, WES - Pennsylvania State University
item BRASIER, KATHY - Pennsylvania State University
item BREWIS, ALEXANDRA - Arizona State University
item Williams, Clinton

Submitted to: Weather, Climate, and Society
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/21/2022
Publication Date: 4/1/2022
Citation: Du Bray, M.V., Quimby, B., Bausch, J.C., Wutich, A., Eaton, W., Brasier, K., Brewis, A., Williams, C.F. 2022. Red, white, and blue: environmental distress among water stakeholders in a U.S. farming community. Weather, Climate, and Society. 14(2):585-595. https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-21-0103.1.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-21-0103.1

Interpretive Summary: Water shortage can cause distress in farming communities in the southwestern United States. Across the U.S. these communities express concern over environmental change. However, distress due to climate change, tends to be lower than other more acute environmental challenges such as drought. Using an emotional geographies framework, the study takes a novel approach to identifying the forms of everyday emotional expressions related to water and climate change in the context of a vulnerable rural agricultural community in central Arizona. Using data from individual and group interviews, an emotion-based keyword-in-context analysis is used to explore reports of sadness and fear over environmental change among water stakeholders. Distress is found to be related to anticipated socio-political upheavals in response to environmental change rather than to environmental change itself.

Technical Abstract: This paper explores environmental distress (e.g., feeling “blue”) in a politically-conservative (“red”) and predominately-white (“white”) farming community in the southwestern United States. Across the U.S. in such communities, expressed concern over environmental change—including climate change—tends to be lower. Such denial is understood to have a palliative effect that reduces feelings of eco-anxiety. Using an emotional geographies framework, our study takes a novel approach to identifying the forms of everyday emotional expressions related to water and climate change in the context of a vulnerable rural agricultural community in central Arizona. Using data from individual (n= 48) and group (n=8) interviews, we use an emotion-based keyword-in-context analysis to explore reports of sadness and fear over environmental change among water stakeholders. We find that this distress is related to anticipated socio-political upheavals in response to environmental change, rather than environmental change itself. We discuss implications for research on emotional geographies, solastalgia, water and mental health, and farmer suicidality during droughts.