Skirting complexity: The retarding quest for the average water user

Abstract

The urban water industry leads many other sectors in Australia in tackling the complex challenges of climate change and managing unpredictable supplies of a vital resource. But effective engagement with social and cultural dimensions of urban water sustainability is retarded by the persistence of historical and rationalist models of water users and user-provider relations that deploy demographic and psychological statistics but are largely uninformed by analyses of the cultural meanings, social purposes and practical effects of water and related technologies in everyday life. Particularly problematic is the emphasis on the average water user. Drawing examples from three qualitative research projects conducted between 2004 and 2011 that involved householders, water industry and government personnel, and other researchers, this paper examines how notions of average users are mobilized alongside, and sometimes interfere with, more recent forms of user-provider relationships, leading to water-saving strategies that make individuals hyper-responsible while avoiding more complicated transformations of infrastructures, institutions and baseline service expectations. The conclusion considers conditions of production and circulation of social and cultural research and knowledge in the water sector.

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