Submitter: Christy Spackman, SFIS - Arizona State University, Christy.Spackman@asu.edu
Abstract:
Due to shrinking supplies and increasing demand, many Arizona municipalities are pursuing a new approach to water provisioning, direct potable reuse (a.k.a. water recycling), whereby municipal wastewater is cleaned to drinking water standards. This making and doing project investigates how re-centering embodied knowledge in drinking water governance can shift the relationship between municipal water producers and their customers, with the potential to enhance regional sustainability at this inflection point in what is deemed an acceptable drinking water source. We present a multi-media experiential water tasting developed through collaboration with extreme users (municipal water avoiders, municipal water producers) in metropolitan Phoenix. We drew on the political potential of reimagining sensory politics (Spackman & Burlingame 2019) through “making taste public” (Voß & Guggenheim 2019), and on insights from sensory science of water (Suffet et al., 1999; Teillet et al., 2010). Presented at a public art festival (November 2021) and at the Arizona Water Association Conference (April 2022), we engaged more than 1000 members of the public, and more than 90 water professionals, in reconsidering how they construct the taste of water. Findings demonstrate that embodied knowledge potentially provides “a new way of thinking” about taste and its role in water governance.
Areas of STS Scholarship: Infrastructure, Forms and practices of expertise, Governance and Public Policy
Authors/Participants: Marisa Manheim
Christy Spackman, SFIS - Arizona State University
