Big Water, Everyday Water: A Sociotechnical Perspective

Sofoulis, Zoë

doi:10.1080/10304310500322685

Cited by 159 publications

(144 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…This study is part of recent work in the ethnographic tradition that analyses how people talk about and interact with water (Kurz et al 2005;Strang 2004Strang , 2005Sofoulis 2005). In bringing to awareness 'routinised habits and interactions, retrieving them from the wordless background of 'practical consciousness', and subjecting them to scrutiny and reflection' (Sofoulis 2005: 448), such research provides an important complement to more quantitative analyses of both attitudes to and consumption of water (e.g.…”

Section: Study Area and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing cultures of water in eastern Australian backyard gardens

Head¹,

Muir²

2007

Social & Cultural Geography

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Research into diverse cultural understandings of water provides important contributions to the pressing global issue of sustainable supply, particularly when combined with analysis of relationships between everyday household practice and larger sociotechnical networks of storage and distribution. Here we analyse semistructured interviews with 298 people about their 241 backyards in the Australian east coast cities of Sydney and Wollongong, undertaken during the 2002-03 drought. Water emerged as an important issue in both consciousness and practice. In contrast to a number of other environmental issues which stimulate more polarised responses, a commitment to reducing water consumption was shared across the study population and manifest in a variety of changed practices. However these aspirations are in tension with the pleasure derived from water, and expressed desires for more watery environments. This work contrasts with and extends other studies that have emphasised the perceived separation between the modern home and the networks of production that sustain it. We argue that it is in the relationship between house and garden that people see, understand and participate in the network of water storage and distribution. Their active engagement with these processes enhances their capacity to manage and reduce consumption.

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Section: Study Area and Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Changing cultures of water in eastern Australian backyard gardens

Head¹,

Muir²

2007

Social & Cultural Geography

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“…Moving beyond a focus on 'water', sociological research has gone some way towards suggesting alternative conceptualizations of demand as constituted through the routines and habits of everyday practice as well as the systems of provision that make water consumption in its multiple forms possible (Medd and Chappells 2008;Medd and Shove 2006;Shove 2003;Sofoulis 2005;Strengers 2011;Geels 2005). These approaches focus on a deeper understanding of how people use water, what they do when they are using it, why they use it and when they use it.…”

Section: The Importance Of Letting Go Of Watermentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From a social science perspective, a core problematic of understanding water demand is the difficulty of making visible the inconspicuous, taken for granted water consumption and waste water production embedded in the use of infrastructures and technologies in the modern home, and the connections of this demand to current and shifting urban infrastructure (Kaika and Swyngedouw 2000;Sofoulis 2005;Allon and Sofoulis 2006;Shove 2003;Hand et al 2005;Kaika 2004;Geels 2005). This inconspicuous consumption becomes particularly concerning for a sector seeking to anticipate the challenges of climatic change in combination with other population, cultural and technological changes.…”

Section: The Importance Of Letting Go Of Watermentioning

confidence: 99%

Developing Novel Approaches to Tracking Domestic Water Demand Under Uncertainty—A Reflection on the “Up Scaling” of Social Science Approaches in the United Kingdom

Browne

Medd

Anderson

2012

Water Resour Manage

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Climate change, socio-demographic change and changing patterns of ordinary consumption are creating new and unpredictable pressures on urban water resources in the UK. While demand management is currently offered as a first option for managing supply/ demand deficit, the uncertainties around demand and its' potential trajectories are problematic for water resources research, planning and policy. In this article we review the ways in which particular branches of social science come together to offer a model of 'distributed demand' that helps explain these current and future uncertainties. We also identify potential strategies for tracking where the drivers of change for demand may lie. Rather than suggest an alternative 'demand forecasting' technique, we propose methodological approaches that 'stretch out' and 'scale up' proxy measures of demand to inform water resources planning and policy. These proxy measurements could act as 'indictors of change' to water demand at a population level that could then be used to inform research and policy strategies. We conclude by arguing for the need to recognise the co-production of demand futures and supply trajectories.

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“…(Levy-Leboyer 1988, p780). It is therefore possible that social science researchers may follow fads more willingly than breaking new ground and experimenting with new methods, and developing new theoretical stances that might come from a less restricted view of the current situation or the change of discourse that Sofoulis (2005) advocates.…”

Section: Framing Water Use/practicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This has created an opportunity to allocate blame for supply failures onto customers by reframing the issue as a problem of uncontrolled demand, which has not been sufficiently curtailed by the threat of climate change. Taking an example from Australia, Sofoulis (2005) describes the situation well, explaining how water has become "in its taken-for-granted abundance a 'utility', part of the inconspicuous background of urban life," and the customer, externalised from the commodification of the water cycle by large utility companies, is left with a "remnant of responsibility" as a 'user'; the bulk of the responsibility being maintained by water companies whose revenues will decrease if water-saving measures are successful, and the bulk of the blame being apportioned to customers who remain largely out of the control of utility companies. The constricting nature of maintained revenue combined with limited development opportunities, alongside customer confidence in supplies and unrestricted consumption, in the context of climate change, is therefore mainly dealt with by shaming the end user.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Re-Framing Environmental Social Science Research for Sustainable Water Management in a Changing Climate

Pearce

Dessai

Barr

2012

Water Resour Manage

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This paper considers aspects of environmental social science research in the UK and explores an obvious bias towards the development of instruments to manage demand as an adaptation to climate change, and consequently the predominance of interest in the customer from a demand-side perspective. In the case of water, this has resulted in an inappropriate mixing of individualist research methods designed to measure public perceptions of risk and water-based practices, with mass consumption data that cannot be specifically linked to the individual. This mixing has a tendency to reinforce a long-standing blame culture that drives interest in the development of behaviour change initiatives while the relatively unchallenged hydraulic mission to provide safe drinking water and sanitation progresses. With this in mind this paper reviews examples of water use research from California, Australia, and the UK and highlights the more effective routes to understanding water customers and developing behaviour change initiatives that utilise stages of change models and grounded techniques incorporating qualitative and quantitative data from individual sources. A secondary aim is to argue for re-framing the relations between various actors in a changing climate to allow the development of new policy approaches, learning, and openness, from industry, regulators, and customers, based on new theories from the field.

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Big Water, Everyday Water: A Sociotechnical Perspective

Cited by 159 publications

References 9 publications

Changing cultures of water in eastern Australian backyard gardens

Changing cultures of water in eastern Australian backyard gardens

Developing Novel Approaches to Tracking Domestic Water Demand Under Uncertainty—A Reflection on the “Up Scaling” of Social Science Approaches in the United Kingdom

Re-Framing Environmental Social Science Research for Sustainable Water Management in a Changing Climate

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