Amber Wutich

Credibility, salience, and legitimacy of boundary objects: water managers' assessment of a simulation model in an immersive decision theater

The connection between scientific knowledge and environmental policy is enhanced through boundary organizations and objects that are perceived to be credible, salient, and legitimate. In this study, water resource decision-makers evaluated the knowledge embedded in WaterSim, an interactive simulation model of water supply and demand presented in an immersive decision theater. Content analysis of individual responses demonstrated that stakeholders were fairly critical of the models validity, relevance, and bias. Differing perspectives reveal tradeoffs in achieving credible, salient, and legitimate boundary objects, along with the need for iterative processes that engage them in the co-production of knowledge and action. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Body Norms and Fat Stigma in Global Perspective

While slim-body ideals have spread globally in the last several decades, we know comparatively little of any concurrent proliferation of fat-stigmatizing beliefs. Using cultural surveys and body mass estimates collected from 680 adults from urban areas in 10 countries and territories, we test for cultural variation in how people conceptualize and stigmatize excess weight and obesity. Using consensus analysis of belief statements about obese and fat bodies, we find evidence of a shared model of obesity that transcends populations and includes traditionally fat-positive societies. Elements include the recognition of obesity as a disease, the role of individual responsibility in weight gain and loss, and the social undesirability of fat but also the inappropriateness of open prejudice against fat. Focusing on statements about fat that are explicitly stigmatizing, we find most of these expressed in the middle-income and developing-country samples. Results suggest a profound global diffusion of negative ideas about obesity. Given the moral attributions embedded in these now shared ideas about fat bodies, a globalization of body norms and fat stigma, not just of obesity itself, appears to be well under way, and it has the potential to proliferate associated prejudice and suffering.

Water insecurity and emotional distress: Coping with supply, access, and seasonal variability of water in a Bolivian squatter settlement

Recent research suggests that insecure access to key resources is associated with negative mental health outcomes. Many of these studies focus on drought and famine in agricultural, pastoral, and foraging communities, and indicate that food insecurity mediates the link between water insecurity and emotional distress. The present study is the first to systematically examine intra-community patterns of water insecurity in an urban setting. In 2004-2005, we collected interview data from a random sample of 72 household heads in Villa Israel, a squatter settlement of Cochabamba, Bolivia. We examined the extent to which water-related emotional distress is linked with three dimensions of water insecurity: inadequate water supply; insufficient access to water distribution systems; and dependence on seasonal water sources, and with gender. We found that access to water distribution systems and female gender were significantly associated with emotional distress, while water supply and dependence on seasonal water sources were not. Economic assets, social assets, entitlements to water markets, and entitlements to reciprocal exchanges of water were significantly associated with emotional distress, while entitlements to a common-pool water resource institution were not. These results suggest that water-related emotional distress develops as a byproduct of the social and economic negotiations people employ to gain access to water distribution systems in the absence of clear procedures or established water rights rather than as a result of water scarcity per se.

Urban Ethnohydrology: Cultural Knowledge of Water Quality and Water Management in a Desert City

Popular concern over water quality has important implications for public water management because it can both empower water utilities to improve service but also limit their ability to make changes. In the desert city of Phoenix, Arizona, obtaining sufficient high-quality water resources for a growing urban population poses a major challenge. Decision makers and urban hydrologists are aware of these challenges to water sustainability but the range of acceptable policy and management options available to them is constrained by public opinion. Therefore, this study examines cultural models of water quality and water management, termed ethnohydrology, among urban residents. The study yields three key findings. First, urban residents appear to have a shared model of ethnohydrology which holds that a) there are significant water quality risks associated with low financial investments in city-wide water treatment and the desert location of Phoenix, and b) government monitoring and management combined with household-level water treatment can yield water of an acceptable quality. Second, people with high incomes are more likely to engage in expensive water filtration activities and to agree with the cultural ethnohydrology model found. Third, people living in communities that are highly concerned about water quality are less likely to share high agreement around ethnohydrology. The results have implications for water policy making and planning, particularly in disadvantaged and vulnerable communities where water quality is perceived to be low.

Assessment of de facto wastewater reuse across the U.S.: Trends between 1980 and 2008

De facto wastewater reuse is the incidental presence of treated wastewater in a water supply source. In 1980 the EPA identified drinking water treatment plants (DWTPs) impacted by upstream wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) discharges and found the top 25 most impacted DWTPs contained between 2% and 16% wastewater discharges from upstream locations (i.e., de facto reuse) under average streamflow conditions. This study is the first to provide an update to the 1980 EPA analysis. An ArcGIS model of DWTPs and WWTPs across the U.S. was created to quantify de facto reuse for the top 25 cities in the 1980 EPA study. From 1980 to 2008, de facto reuse increased for 17 of the 25 DWTPs, as municipal flows upstream of the sites increased by 68%. Under low streamflow conditions, de facto reuse in DWTP supplies ranged from 7% to 100%, illustrating the importance of wastewater in sustainable water supplies. Case studies were performed on four cities to analyze the reasons for changes in de facto reuse over time. Three of the four sites have greater than 20% treated wastewater effluent within their drinking water source for streamflow less than the 25th percentile historic flow.

Shared Norms and Their Explanation for the Social Clustering of Obesity

OBJECTIVES We aimed to test the hypothesized role of shared body size norms in the social contagion of body size and obesity. METHODS Using data collected in 2009 from 101 women and 812 of their social ties in Phoenix, Arizona, we assessed the indirect effect of social norms on shared body mass index (BMI) measured in 3 different ways. RESULTS We confirmed Christakis and Fowlers basic finding that BMI and obesity do indeed cluster socially, but we found that body size norms accounted for only a small portion of this effect (at most 20%) and only via 1 of the 3 pathways. CONCLUSIONS If shared social norms play only a minor role in the social contagion of obesity, interventions targeted at changing ideas about appropriate BMIs or body sizes may be less useful than those working more directly with behaviors, for example, by changing eating habits or transforming opportunities for and constraints on dietary intake.

Perceptions of climate change: Linking local and global perceptions through a cultural knowledge approach

Understanding public perceptions of climate change is fundamental to both climate science and policy because it defines local and global socio-political contexts within which policy makers and scientists operate. To date, most studies addressing climate change perceptions have been place-based. While such research is informative, comparative studies across sites are important for building generalized theory around why and how people understand and interpret climate change and associated risks. This paper presents a cross-sectional study from six different country contexts to illustrate a novel comparative approach to unraveling the complexities of local vs global perceptions around climate change. We extract and compare ‘cultural knowledge’ regarding climate change using the theory of ‘culture as consensus’. To demonstrate the value of this approach, we examine cross-national data to see if people within specific and diverse places share ideas about global climate change. Findings show that although data was collected using ethnographically derived items collected through place-based methods we still find evidence of a shared cultural model of climate change which spans the diverse sites in the six countries. Moreover, there are specific signs of climate change which appear to be recognized cross-culturally. In addition, results show that being female and having a higher education are both likely to have a positive effect on global cultural competency of individuals. We discuss these result in the context of literature on environmental perceptions and propose that people with higher education are more likely to share common perceptions about climate change across cultures and tentatively suggest that we appear to see the emergence of a ‘global’, cross-cultural mental model around climate change and its potential impacts which in itself is linked to higher education.

Food, Water, and Scarcity: Toward a Broader Anthropology of Resource Insecurity

Food and water shortages are two of the greatest challenges facing humans in the coming century. While our theoretical understanding of how humans become vulnerable to and cope with hunger is relatively well developed, anthropological research on parallel problems in the water domain is limited. By carefully considering well-established propositions derived from the food literature against what is known about water, our goal in this essay is to advance identifying, theorizing, and testing a broader anthropology of resource insecurity. Our analysis focuses on (1) the causes of resource insecurity at the community level, (2) “coping” responses to resource insecurity at the household level, and (3) the effect of insecurity on emotional well-being and mental health at the individual level. Based on our findings, we argue that human experiences of food and water insecurity are sufficiently similar to facilitate a broader theory of resource insecurity, including in how households and individuals cope. There are also important differences between food and water insecurity, including the role of structural factors (such as markets) in creating community-level vulnerabilities. These suggest food and water insecurity may also produce household struggles and individual suffering along independent pathways.

Comparing Focus Group and Individual Responses on Sensitive Topics: A Study of Water Decision Makers in a Desert City

Focus groups have gained a reputation for facilitating data collection about sensitive topics. However, we know little about how focus group methods perform compared to individual response formats, particularly for sensitive topics. The goal of this study is to assess how well focus groups perform when compared to individual responses collected using open-ended self-administered questionnaires for sensitive policy-making topics among water decision makers in Phoenix, Arizona. The analysis compares focus group and self-administered questionnaire responses among fifty-five decision makers for three types of sensitive topics: competence, risk, and gatekeeping. The results indicate that respondents (1) gave similar responses in group and open-ended self-administered questionnaires when discussion topics were only moderately sensitive, (2) volunteered less information in focus groups than in open-ended self-administered questionnaires for very sensitive topics when there did not appear to be a compelling reason for respondents to risk being stigmatized by other group members, and (3) volunteered more information in focus groups than in open-ended self-administered questionnaires for very sensitive topics when there appeared to be an opportunity to exchange important information or solve a pressing problem. The authors conclude that multimethod research—including individual and group response formats—may be the best strategy for collecting data from decision makers about sensitive policy-related issues.

Estimating Household Water Use: A Comparison of Diary, Prompted Recall, and Free Recall Methods

Studies of household water use are often based on retrospective behavioral reports, which are vulnerable to threats to informant accuracy. This article compares three methods for collecting household water use data: a diary, prompted recall, and free recall. The analyses are based on data from seventy-two randomly selected households in Cochabamba, Bolivia. Per capita water use estimates based on the three methods were significantly different. When compared against known parameters, the diary provided the most accurate estimate of household water use. The prompted recall method yielded similar results to the diary method on hygienic and food preparation tasks, but there were significant differences on household cleaning tasks. The free recall method significantly underestimated water use. There were not significant differences in water use assessments within households, but there was variation in misestimation across households. The article discusses which participants (e.g., heads of less water-consumptive households) provided more reliable water use estimates.