Any political ecologist embarking on a campaign to analyze the socionatural relations of power and environmental struggle in the American West does so in the wake of the seminal works of the late twentieth century by authors like Donald Worster (1985), Marc Reisner (1986), and Wallace Stegner (1992), just to name a few. However, Eric Perramond's work, the result of a decade of historical and ethnographic study on the question of water rights in New Mexico, has managed to not only make the laborious subject of water rights interesting, but also to provide a fresh and humanizing take on some of the key problems that authors before him have engaged. Unsettled waters: rights, law, and identity in the American West is a versatile work that manages to open up a set of legal and administrative processes that have for too long been the sole purview of experts and legal scholars. It will allow serious critical study for students in advanced environmental, indigenous, or water law courses, just as it offers insights for political ecologists, geographers, anthropologists, and sociologists interested in the American Southwest, resource sovereignty issues, identity, and the slow march of bureaucratic rationality. 

O’Neill, Brian F. 2019. Review of Eric Perramond’s Unsettled Waters: Rights, Law, and Identity in the American West. In Journal of Political Ecology. February 2019, Vol. 26. DOI 10.2458/v26i1.23168