Smartphones have become ubiquitous commodities in our contemporary lives and essential to our daily experiences. With limited public transportation in the United States and dependence on cars, the combination of smartphones and driving raises important questions of safety. We discuss our collaboration with Chevrolet-GM in Detroit in product development and user experience research, namely beta-testing a mobile phone app that was developed by Chevrolet to eliminate texting while driving, thereby improving car and road safety. We illustrate that the heightened awareness of distracted driving to self and others created spaces for young adult drivers to demonstrate their moral personhood through the care of and for others in their individual use of the app and in their promotion of its use to family members and friends. The practical applications of this finding resulted in a successful app product and its launch campaign, which incorporated the emerging insights from this study.
{"title":"RESPONSIBLE DRIVING IN THE AGE OF SMARTPHONES: APPLIED RESEARCH FOR IMPROVING ROAD SAFETY IN THE MOTOR CITY","authors":"Yuson Jung, Andrea Sankar, Kaitlin Carter, Yen-Ting Chang, Bianca Dean, Travis Kruso, Colleen Linn, Emily Lock, Craig Meiners, Molly Sanford, Haley Scott, Jasmine Walker","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-82.4.382","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-82.4.382","url":null,"abstract":"Smartphones have become ubiquitous commodities in our contemporary lives and essential to our daily experiences. With limited public transportation in the United States and dependence on cars, the combination of smartphones and driving raises important questions of safety. We discuss our collaboration with Chevrolet-GM in Detroit in product development and user experience research, namely beta-testing a mobile phone app that was developed by Chevrolet to eliminate texting while driving, thereby improving car and road safety. We illustrate that the heightened awareness of distracted driving to self and others created spaces for young adult drivers to demonstrate their moral personhood through the care of and for others in their individual use of the app and in their promotion of its use to family members and friends. The practical applications of this finding resulted in a successful app product and its launch campaign, which incorporated the emerging insights from this study.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139263464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-17DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-82.4.342
Abby M. Vidmar, E. C. Wells, Madeleine Zheng, Nora Awad, Sarah Combs, Diana Diaz
In the United States, underbounded communities—urban disadvantaged unincorporated neighborhoods characterized by high-poverty and high residential density lying just outside the border of an incorporated municipality—often lack consistent access to clean and safe water. Poor water quality and inadequate infrastructure shape residents’ risk perceptions, often leading to tap water mistrust, but little is known about the broader social, political, and economic drivers of water quality in these settings or about how such drivers inform the social construction of risk across different stakeholder groups. Using an underbounded African-American/Hispanic neighborhood in the Tampa Bay metropolitan region as a case study, we illustrate how tap water mistrust is socially constructed and how these constructions contrast between neighborhood residents and government officials. Interviews and participant observation with these groups reveal that tap water mistrust emerges from the nexus of inadequate infrastructure, poor housing conditions, challenges relating to the affordability of piped water, and jurisdictional disconnects. We call for interventions that foreground participatory research, integrate social and cultural context into technical solutions, and prioritize equitability in decision making.
{"title":"“THAT'S WHAT WE CALL ‘AESTHETICS,’ NOT A PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUE”: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF TAP WATER MISTRUST IN AN UNDERBOUNDED COMMUNITY","authors":"Abby M. Vidmar, E. C. Wells, Madeleine Zheng, Nora Awad, Sarah Combs, Diana Diaz","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-82.4.342","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-82.4.342","url":null,"abstract":"In the United States, underbounded communities—urban disadvantaged unincorporated neighborhoods characterized by high-poverty and high residential density lying just outside the border of an incorporated municipality—often lack consistent access to clean and safe water. Poor water quality and inadequate infrastructure shape residents’ risk perceptions, often leading to tap water mistrust, but little is known about the broader social, political, and economic drivers of water quality in these settings or about how such drivers inform the social construction of risk across different stakeholder groups. Using an underbounded African-American/Hispanic neighborhood in the Tampa Bay metropolitan region as a case study, we illustrate how tap water mistrust is socially constructed and how these constructions contrast between neighborhood residents and government officials. Interviews and participant observation with these groups reveal that tap water mistrust emerges from the nexus of inadequate infrastructure, poor housing conditions, challenges relating to the affordability of piped water, and jurisdictional disconnects. We call for interventions that foreground participatory research, integrate social and cultural context into technical solutions, and prioritize equitability in decision making.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":"47 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139264798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-17DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-82.4.354
Marc L. Miller, R. Pollnac, Patrick J. Christie
Over the last several decades, marine protected areas (MPAs)—including reserves, parks, sanctuaries, natural monuments, natural resource management areas, heritage areas, and the like—have proliferated throughout the world. In this conceptual and empirical paper, we explore the diversity and nature of MPAs in Puget Sound, Washington, focusing on outdoor recreational uses. Puget Sound MPAs qualify as marine protected destinations (MPDs) and—when taken together with adjacent gateway regions—constitute protected destination systems (PDSs). Internal PDS dynamics are examined with a human-artifactual-natural system (HANS) framework. A face-to-face social survey (N=1532) of people who frequented Puget Sound marine reserves reveals, among other findings, that (1) a great diversity of recreational activities (and associated hard and soft artifacts) populate the MPAs, (2) type of recreational activity is related to perceptions of MPAs as conservation solutions and symbols, (3) level of education is positively correlated with perceptions of MPAs as conservation solutions, (4) respondents with higher levels of education are less likely to engage in recreational fishing and more likely to recreate on the beach than those with less education, and (5) respondents with higher levels of income are more likely than those with lower incomes to recreate on the water. Looking ahead, recommendations are offered regarding social science research addressing MPA recreation and tourism issues.
{"title":"MPAs AS PROTECTED DESTINATIONS: RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN OUTDOOR RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES, INCLUDING FISHING, AND PERCEPTIONS OF MARINE RESERVES IN PUGET SOUND, WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES","authors":"Marc L. Miller, R. Pollnac, Patrick J. Christie","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-82.4.354","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-82.4.354","url":null,"abstract":"Over the last several decades, marine protected areas (MPAs)—including reserves, parks, sanctuaries, natural monuments, natural resource management areas, heritage areas, and the like—have proliferated throughout the world. In this conceptual and empirical paper, we explore the diversity and nature of MPAs in Puget Sound, Washington, focusing on outdoor recreational uses. Puget Sound MPAs qualify as marine protected destinations (MPDs) and—when taken together with adjacent gateway regions—constitute protected destination systems (PDSs). Internal PDS dynamics are examined with a human-artifactual-natural system (HANS) framework. A face-to-face social survey (N=1532) of people who frequented Puget Sound marine reserves reveals, among other findings, that (1) a great diversity of recreational activities (and associated hard and soft artifacts) populate the MPAs, (2) type of recreational activity is related to perceptions of MPAs as conservation solutions and symbols, (3) level of education is positively correlated with perceptions of MPAs as conservation solutions, (4) respondents with higher levels of education are less likely to engage in recreational fishing and more likely to recreate on the beach than those with less education, and (5) respondents with higher levels of income are more likely than those with lower incomes to recreate on the water. Looking ahead, recommendations are offered regarding social science research addressing MPA recreation and tourism issues.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":"24 06","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139265741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-24DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-82.3.223
Amanda Mokoena
The City of Cape Town experienced one of its worst droughts in 2015–2018, resulting in the Cape Water Crisis. This crisis revealed existing and new inequalities in how the city distributed water. I conducted fieldwork in the township of Khayelitsha in Cape Town, South Africa, against the backdrop of the crisis, to investigate how the city’s response to the drought worsened water inequality in informal settlements. Geography and poor water governance negatively affected water service delivery within the city, and townships as contested spaces faced the greatest inequality. I analyzed the city’s water management policy and strategies, conducted in-depth interviews with service providers who dealt directly with water distribution in Khayelitsha, and interviewed residents in different settlements of the township. As water inequality is relative, the study required a comparative basis to make the argument of unequal distribution using John Rawls’ theory of distributive justice. Literature at the time, in general, looked at inequality across different and distant settlements, with comparisons between the township as a monolith and the central business district and suburbs. I focused on inequality by studying two settlements within the same township. Although water inequality was caused by spatial inequality, it is upheld by a host of sociopolitical factors. The South African Constitution may enshrine water as a basic human right, but experiences from Khayelitsha reveal a cost-recovery model for water service delivery that prioritizes paying customers and disregards the poor.
{"title":"QUESTIONING DAY ZERO: RIGHTS, PROVISION, AND WATER INEQUALITY IN SOUTH AFRICA","authors":"Amanda Mokoena","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-82.3.223","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-82.3.223","url":null,"abstract":"The City of Cape Town experienced one of its worst droughts in 2015–2018, resulting in the Cape Water Crisis. This crisis revealed existing and new inequalities in how the city distributed water. I conducted fieldwork in the township of Khayelitsha in Cape Town, South Africa, against the backdrop of the crisis, to investigate how the city’s response to the drought worsened water inequality in informal settlements. Geography and poor water governance negatively affected water service delivery within the city, and townships as contested spaces faced the greatest inequality. I analyzed the city’s water management policy and strategies, conducted in-depth interviews with service providers who dealt directly with water distribution in Khayelitsha, and interviewed residents in different settlements of the township. As water inequality is relative, the study required a comparative basis to make the argument of unequal distribution using John Rawls’ theory of distributive justice. Literature at the time, in general, looked at inequality across different and distant settlements, with comparisons between the township as a monolith and the central business district and suburbs. I focused on inequality by studying two settlements within the same township. Although water inequality was caused by spatial inequality, it is upheld by a host of sociopolitical factors. The South African Constitution may enshrine water as a basic human right, but experiences from Khayelitsha reveal a cost-recovery model for water service delivery that prioritizes paying customers and disregards the poor.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47936649","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-24DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-82.3.261
Colleen Linn, Jessica Robbins-Panko, Tam E Perry, K. Seibel
In Flint, Michigan (USA), an ongoing anthropogenic water crisis exposed residents to lead and other drinking water contaminants. The neoliberal policies that created this water crisis made Flint residents responsible for their own safe drinking water. In this article, we draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2018 among older adults in Flint to argue that the water crisis has deepened forms of responsibilized citizenship by making residents responsible for ameliorating harms of the state. Older residents’ narratives of previous experiences of racialized structural violence shaped the emotional qualities of their present experiences with contaminated water. By exploring these responses and situating them within narratives of the past, we show that contemporary water governance can operate according to a necropolitical logic, in which citizens are responsibilized not towards an optimized future but rather in response to harms caused by the neoliberal state. Necropolitical logic reinforces the racial and economic inequalities that characterize majority-Black postindustrial American cities, thus limiting the potential for equitable resource distribution. By foregrounding older adults’ experientially grounded knowledge of the sociopolitical life of water, we underline the need for a holistic approach to justice that addresses the harms of both the present and the past and the relational nature of these harms. This approach could work towards remedying the racially disproportionate experiences of water insecurity in the United States.
{"title":"LIVING WITH LEAD: OLDER ADULTS’ EXPERIENCES OF NECROPOLITICAL WATER GOVERNANCE IN FLINT, MICHIGAN","authors":"Colleen Linn, Jessica Robbins-Panko, Tam E Perry, K. Seibel","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-82.3.261","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-82.3.261","url":null,"abstract":"In Flint, Michigan (USA), an ongoing anthropogenic water crisis exposed residents to lead and other drinking water contaminants. The neoliberal policies that created this water crisis made Flint residents responsible for their own safe drinking water. In this article, we draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2018 among older adults in Flint to argue that the water crisis has deepened forms of responsibilized citizenship by making residents responsible for ameliorating harms of the state. Older residents’ narratives of previous experiences of racialized structural violence shaped the emotional qualities of their present experiences with contaminated water. By exploring these responses and situating them within narratives of the past, we show that contemporary water governance can operate according to a necropolitical logic, in which citizens are responsibilized not towards an optimized future but rather in response to harms caused by the neoliberal state. Necropolitical logic reinforces the racial and economic inequalities that characterize majority-Black postindustrial American cities, thus limiting the potential for equitable resource distribution. By foregrounding older adults’ experientially grounded knowledge of the sociopolitical life of water, we underline the need for a holistic approach to justice that addresses the harms of both the present and the past and the relational nature of these harms. This approach could work towards remedying the racially disproportionate experiences of water insecurity in the United States.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43798475","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-24DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-82.3.274
V. Gagnon
The Ojibwe Gichigami (Lake Superior) bioregion is the ancestral and contemporary homeland of the Anishinaabe Ojibwa. Harvesting and consuming fish has sustained people for millennia, but today, toxic risks due to fish contamination contribute to many burdens for both human and more-than-human worlds. For the Ojibwa, nibi gaye nii’kinaaganaa (“water and all my relations”) are the lived experiences of fish-reliant communities and emphasize sustaining good relations with water and relatives. Toxicity disrupts traditional harvest lifeways, violates treaty rights, and problematizes Ojibwa water relations. In this article, I describe diverging values attributed to water and conflicting norms of water quality relations between Ojibwa people and scientific practices of toxicology. Drawn from a study of institutional water decision making, I examine practices associated with water, fish, and risk and how these practices clarify ethics in water policy. The study of toxic substances, albeit invisible in water policy and fish advisories, raises broader issues of Indigenous water justice, particularly for sensitive populations (e.g., developing children, women of childbearing age, and fish-reliant communities). In proposing a broader justice framework for reimagining water lives and livelihoods, I argue for foregrounding Indigenous water justice ethics based on long-term wellbeing, a time period inclusive of seven generations.
Ojibwe Gichigami(苏必利尔湖)生物区是Anishinaabe Ojibwa人的祖先和当代家园。几千年来，人们一直以捕捞和食用鱼类为生，但今天，鱼类污染带来的有毒风险给人类和人类以外的世界带来了许多负担。对于奥吉布瓦人来说，nibi gaye nii 'kinaaganaa(“水和我所有的关系”)是依赖鱼类的社区的生活经历，强调与水和亲戚保持良好的关系。毒性破坏了传统的收获生活方式，侵犯了条约权利，并使奥吉布瓦人的水关系出现问题。在这篇文章中，我描述了归因于水的不同价值和奥吉布瓦人与毒理学科学实践之间水质关系的冲突规范。从机构水决策的研究中得出，我研究了与水、鱼和风险相关的实践，以及这些实践如何澄清水政策中的伦理。对有毒物质的研究虽然在水政策和鱼类咨询中是看不见的，但却提出了更广泛的土著水正义问题，特别是对敏感人口(例如发展中儿童、育龄妇女和依赖鱼类的社区)。在为重新构想水生命和生计提出更广泛的司法框架时，我主张将基于长期福祉(包括七代人)的土著水正义伦理放在重要位置。
{"title":"“WATER AND ALL MY RELATIONS”: REIMAGINING INDIGENOUS WATER JUSTICE FOR SEVEN GENERATIONS","authors":"V. Gagnon","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-82.3.274","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-82.3.274","url":null,"abstract":"The Ojibwe Gichigami (Lake Superior) bioregion is the ancestral and contemporary homeland of the Anishinaabe Ojibwa. Harvesting and consuming fish has sustained people for millennia, but today, toxic risks due to fish contamination contribute to many burdens for both human and more-than-human worlds. For the Ojibwa, nibi gaye nii’kinaaganaa (“water and all my relations”) are the lived experiences of fish-reliant communities and emphasize sustaining good relations with water and relatives. Toxicity disrupts traditional harvest lifeways, violates treaty rights, and problematizes Ojibwa water relations. In this article, I describe diverging values attributed to water and conflicting norms of water quality relations between Ojibwa people and scientific practices of toxicology. Drawn from a study of institutional water decision making, I examine practices associated with water, fish, and risk and how these practices clarify ethics in water policy. The study of toxic substances, albeit invisible in water policy and fish advisories, raises broader issues of Indigenous water justice, particularly for sensitive populations (e.g., developing children, women of childbearing age, and fish-reliant communities). In proposing a broader justice framework for reimagining water lives and livelihoods, I argue for foregrounding Indigenous water justice ethics based on long-term wellbeing, a time period inclusive of seven generations.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44872038","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-24DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-82.3.235
Lucero Radonic
Water utilities are incentivizing residential water conservation and incorporating alternative water sources, such as rainwater. How do past relationships with state institutions and their water infrastructures impact present engagements with state-sponsored rainwater collection? How does the formalization of rainwater harvesting as a conservation strategy account for or discount the practices and values of low-income Hispanic residents? Mixed methods data from southern Arizona show that collectively, low-income Hispanic participants had rainwater collection expertise often born from past experiences in the context of precarious water provisioning, but both residents and institutional experts tended to downplay this situated expertise. At the same time, by enrolling in state-sponsored rainwater collection, many low-income Hispanic households enacted their belonging to the city on their own terms, charting an unexpected path towards urban inclusion. I highlight how applied anthropology contributes to adaptive water management by showing how different relationships, values, and practices imbue people’s engagement with water infrastructures.
{"title":"AT THE FRONTIER OF WATER CONSERVATION: ATTENDING TO RELATIONSHIPS, VALUES, AND PRACTICES FOR INCLUSIVE INFRASTRUCTURE","authors":"Lucero Radonic","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-82.3.235","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-82.3.235","url":null,"abstract":"Water utilities are incentivizing residential water conservation and incorporating alternative water sources, such as rainwater. How do past relationships with state institutions and their water infrastructures impact present engagements with state-sponsored rainwater collection? How does the formalization of rainwater harvesting as a conservation strategy account for or discount the practices and values of low-income Hispanic residents? Mixed methods data from southern Arizona show that collectively, low-income Hispanic participants had rainwater collection expertise often born from past experiences in the context of precarious water provisioning, but both residents and institutional experts tended to downplay this situated expertise. At the same time, by enrolling in state-sponsored rainwater collection, many low-income Hispanic households enacted their belonging to the city on their own terms, charting an unexpected path towards urban inclusion. I highlight how applied anthropology contributes to adaptive water management by showing how different relationships, values, and practices imbue people’s engagement with water infrastructures.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42098071","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-08-24DOI: 10.17730/1938-3525-82.3.248
Anais Roque, A. Wutich, A. Brewis, Melissa Beresford, Hilda Lloréns, Carlos G. García-Quijano, W. Jepson
In 2017, Hurricane María left more than a third of Puerto Rican households without water services. Cascading failures—including the simultaneous collapse of water, electricity, and transportation sectors—presented serious challenges to the timely restoration of governmental services. In response, families across Puerto Rico adopted self-organized coping strategies to obtain the basic resources they needed, including safe and sufficient water. Drawing on the fast-growing literature on household water sharing, we examine how Puerto Rican families shared water as a response to disaster. Using participant-observation data, interviews, and social network data, we studied water-sharing networks in three municipalities—urban, peri-urban, and rural—in western Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane María. We found that extensive water sharing (in 85% of households) spontaneously emerged in the wake of disaster, in previously water-secure rural, peri-urban, and urban communities. Households relied primarily on kin and neighbors, and women had more extensive sharing networks than men. Water-sharing arrangements were typically a form of generalized reciprocity, with little expectation of direct payback. We conclude that water-sharing networks are an important—but understudied and underutilized—component of disaster response. Our research indicates that water sharing should be more explicitly planned for and included in disaster preparedness plans. If water sharing is the dominant approach for coping with disaster-induced water insecurity, we argue, it must be at the core of disaster response.
{"title":"WATER SHARING AS DISASTER RESPONSE: COPING WITH WATER INSECURITY AFTER HURRICANE MARÍA","authors":"Anais Roque, A. Wutich, A. Brewis, Melissa Beresford, Hilda Lloréns, Carlos G. García-Quijano, W. Jepson","doi":"10.17730/1938-3525-82.3.248","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.17730/1938-3525-82.3.248","url":null,"abstract":"In 2017, Hurricane María left more than a third of Puerto Rican households without water services. Cascading failures—including the simultaneous collapse of water, electricity, and transportation sectors—presented serious challenges to the timely restoration of governmental services. In response, families across Puerto Rico adopted self-organized coping strategies to obtain the basic resources they needed, including safe and sufficient water. Drawing on the fast-growing literature on household water sharing, we examine how Puerto Rican families shared water as a response to disaster. Using participant-observation data, interviews, and social network data, we studied water-sharing networks in three municipalities—urban, peri-urban, and rural—in western Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane María. We found that extensive water sharing (in 85% of households) spontaneously emerged in the wake of disaster, in previously water-secure rural, peri-urban, and urban communities. Households relied primarily on kin and neighbors, and women had more extensive sharing networks than men. Water-sharing arrangements were typically a form of generalized reciprocity, with little expectation of direct payback. We conclude that water-sharing networks are an important—but understudied and underutilized—component of disaster response. Our research indicates that water sharing should be more explicitly planned for and included in disaster preparedness plans. If water sharing is the dominant approach for coping with disaster-induced water insecurity, we argue, it must be at the core of disaster response.","PeriodicalId":47620,"journal":{"name":"Human Organization","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2023-08-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45826445","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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