The technopolitics of domestic tap water filtration in New York City

Keywords: Water, infrastructures, pipes, water filtration, watershed, urban, urban political ecology, New York City
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 28

Abstract

Water provision in cities has been at the forefront of the theoretization of power and technopolitics in the anthropology of infrastructures. Urban political ecology has shed light on the power involved in transporting water to cities. By contrast, recent anthropological scholarship has increased our understanding of the power, negotiations, and forms of politics that expand access to water inside cities to the residents of the urban margins. While this literature has proven generative and brought to the fore new sites of political struggle and forms of politics, anthropologists have less explored the technopolitics involved in making tap water acceptable for direct, unmediated consumption by urban residents. New York City has sufficient, widely accessible, and generally biologically safe tap water provision, yet half of New Yorkers use filters for domestic consumption, surpassing in number consumers of both bottled water and direct tap water. The availability of tap water, access to it, and its biological safety do not automatically translate into its social acceptance by users. A majority of Americans no longer drink water directly from tap, but rely on other distribution technologies. Drawing on fieldwork among New York City filter users, I suggest that unlike other mediating technologies, water filters have a salient catch-all quality. That allows filters in the US to participate in a plurality of hydrosocial situations, mediate multiple discontents and projects around tap water, and give the semblance of control to users equipped with diverse understandings of how filters function.