TY - JOUR
T1 - Exposing the myths of household water insecurity in the global north
T2 - A critical review
AU - Meehan, Katie
AU - Jepson, Wendy
AU - Harris, Leila M.
AU - Wutich, Amber
AU - Beresford, Melissa
AU - Fencl, Amanda
AU - London, Jonathan
AU - Pierce, Gregory
AU - Radonic, Lucero
AU - Wells, Christian
AU - Wilson, Nicole J.
AU - Adams, Ellis Adjei
AU - Arsenault, Rachel
AU - Brewis, Alexandra
AU - Harrington, Victoria
AU - Lambrinidou, Yanna
AU - McGregor, Deborah
AU - Patrick, Robert
AU - Pauli, Benjamin
AU - Pearson, Amber L.
AU - Shah, Sameer
AU - Splichalova, Dacotah
AU - Workman, Cassandra
AU - Young, Sera
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Authors. WIREs Water published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.
PY - 2020/11/1
Y1 - 2020/11/1
N2 - Safe and secure water is a cornerstone of modern life in the global North. This article critically examines a set of prevalent myths about household water in high-income countries, with a focus on Canada and the United States. Taking a relational approach, we argue that household water insecurity is a product of institutionalized structures and power, manifests unevenly through space and time, and is reproduced in places we tend to assume are the most water-secure in the world. We first briefly introduce “modern water” and the modern infrastructural ideal, a highly influential set of ideas that have shaped household water provision and infrastructure development over the past two centuries. Against this backdrop, we consolidate evidence to disrupt a set of narratives about water in high-income countries: the notion that water access is universal, clean, affordable, trustworthy, and uniformly or equitably governed. We identify five thematic areas of future research to delineate an agenda for advancing scholarship and action—including challenges of legal and regulatory regimes, the housing-water nexus, water affordability, and water quality and contamination. Data gaps underpin the experiences of household water insecurity. Taken together, our review of water security for households in high-income countries provides a conceptual map to direct critical research in this area for the coming years. This article is categorized under: Human Water > Human Water.
AB - Safe and secure water is a cornerstone of modern life in the global North. This article critically examines a set of prevalent myths about household water in high-income countries, with a focus on Canada and the United States. Taking a relational approach, we argue that household water insecurity is a product of institutionalized structures and power, manifests unevenly through space and time, and is reproduced in places we tend to assume are the most water-secure in the world. We first briefly introduce “modern water” and the modern infrastructural ideal, a highly influential set of ideas that have shaped household water provision and infrastructure development over the past two centuries. Against this backdrop, we consolidate evidence to disrupt a set of narratives about water in high-income countries: the notion that water access is universal, clean, affordable, trustworthy, and uniformly or equitably governed. We identify five thematic areas of future research to delineate an agenda for advancing scholarship and action—including challenges of legal and regulatory regimes, the housing-water nexus, water affordability, and water quality and contamination. Data gaps underpin the experiences of household water insecurity. Taken together, our review of water security for households in high-income countries provides a conceptual map to direct critical research in this area for the coming years. This article is categorized under: Human Water > Human Water.
KW - colonialism
KW - household water insecurity
KW - race
KW - social inequality
KW - water infrastructure
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U2 - 10.1002/wat2.1486
DO - 10.1002/wat2.1486
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:85092035459
SN - 2049-1948
VL - 7
JO - Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water
JF - Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water
IS - 6
M1 - e1486
ER -