“water culture”

Today “water culture” is not meaningfully present in everyday discourse about water in the American West. (There is one specialized usage that modifies “water culture” as “deep water culture” to refer to cultivating plants by suspending their roots in nutrient dense water. This is also known as the “hydroponic method” of agriculture.) However, there are three usages I’ll work through in this entry that could be adopted in everyday discourse. Each usage stems from a fairly distinct theory of human-water relationships.

(1) Water culture as human awareness of the water cycle.

Water culture is when humans have conscious awareness of human and nonhuman interdependency with the water cycle. This definition comes from scholar-activist Vandana Shiva. She maintains that all humans are embedded in the water cycle whether they like it or not, but “water culture” classifies a society that is consciously organized with the water cycle in mind. This definition resonates with the culturalist paradigm (see Why Keywords?) but also hinges on Shiva’s understanding of the ecological paradigm of water. 

In the ecological paradigm, water is recognized as a shared resource flowing through the global water cycle for all humans, plants, and animals. Shiva says: “As long as the forests evaporate the water, [water] moves up into the clouds, forms precipitation, falls as snow, falls as rain, comes back to the ground…[T]he ground welcomes those raindrops, welcomes the snow and in that welcoming, recharges the aquifers, realizes the rivers.”[1] In fact, “Water can never run out as long as it is allowed to recycle itself.”[2] The recycling requires that water shared by ecosystems—plants, animals, and humans within local and global watersheds. In the American West, for example, the sharing of water in ecosystems—with plants, animals, and humans within local and global watersheds—is the reason the Colorado River and its tributaries have flowed for six million years and still flow today, albeit injured.Thanks to the water cycle, under the right cultural conditions, clean water for all life in the biosphere is possible. 

“Water culture,” for Shiva, is thus the conscious awareness that we as humans are at the mercy of the water cycle,[3] that our bodies are 70% water, the planet is 70% water, and that both depend on a healthy, functioning water cycle to thrive.[4] Such cultural formations look like “earth republics,” or “families” in which there exists “a clear recognition that you have to protect all life and you have to use your resources in ways that all life has a share.”[5] In this light, the efficient water user is less important than whole healthy ecosystems, which can deliver water back through the local and global water cycle, which runs against the logic of water grabs because it embeds humans and water in local ecosystems and stresses the interdependence of all beings.[6]

Water extraction, by contrast, fit into what Shiva calls the market paradigm. Similar to conservationist logics of water as a natural resource for economic production, Shiva highlights how this hegemonic discourse benefits economically powerful interests by constructing water as a “universal commodity” governed by the “invisible hand” of deregulated capitalist markets, flowing to whomever can pay for it. This paradigm creates, rather than solves, water scarcity because it justifies market situations in which some people get water and others do not.[7] With water technology and infrastructure, the market paradigm not only deprives marginalized communities of water, but disrupts the water cycle in the process because the “others” without access to water include ecosystems that would otherwise clean and renew water systems globally through the global water cycle:

The [market paradigm] sees water running into the sea as wasted and sees rivers as wild women to be tamed and creates the most violent technologies for rerouting rivers, imprisoning rivers and drying out rivers. That idea of control that develops technologies that disrupt the water cycle and impair the water culture goes hand in hand and is leading to the current thinking that water is just another commodity on the planet, you don’t have to give it any special respect.[8]

In other words, the market paradigm sees no issue extracting water, no issue polluting water, no issue sending water away from local ecosystems and communities because water is nothing special. It’s a place-less commodity. Water scarcity is just a problem of moving and distributing water through “free markets” in regions of scarcity, leading to high water prices that allegedly “automatically” reduce consumption. Shiva reminds us that this market logic is blind

(2) Water culture as a whole away of human life.  

In this usage, water culture is the shared values and practices about water that constitute a particular human culture.[9] The is usage of water culture through which I interpret oral histories of water in the Snake Valley. It also resonates with the culturalist paradigm (see Why Keywords?). It is not only a conscious awareness of the water cycle, but rather something that is present in all manifestations of culture, even if unconscious, because the water cycle permeates every human culture in the biosphere. In this sense, I consider the water cycle as a universal material condition through which all cultures (consciously and unconsciously) organize themselves, and “water culture” as the shared values and practices about water that constitute a particular culture.[10] So if a culture is a way of human life, and all life depends on water, then all societies have a “water culture.”[11] Even human cultures that explicitly deny their embeddedness in the water cycle still have a water culture—in such cases, however, the water culture may be one of denial, and likely disruption, of the water cycle. 

In everyday discourses, this definition has immediate comparative potential. If “water culture” entered into everyday discourse, it could be used to evaluate particular colonial, decolonial, or hybrid relationships with water, for example. It could also make space for understanding the dynamism of water cultures in local human contexts. This usage, however, largely ignores the more-than-human dynamics of culture. 

(3) Water culture as co-embodied human and non-human responses to the water cycle. 

The final usage I’ll present takes Jennifer Daryl Slack’s call for non-athropocentric culture seriously (see frame: Culture as Non-Anthropocentric).

For this potential usage, “culture” is a process of interdependent, land-based, co-embodied human and non-human struggle in which relations of power are reproduced, resisted, and transformed.[12] Here, water culture would account for the ways in which such non-anthropocentric cultures respond to the material conditions of the water cycle. So when we speak of “water culture” in this non-anthropocentric sense, we speak of how humans and nonhumans in particular bounded sites contend with the water cycle. This is the usage of water culture that I would ultimately wish to pursue in everyday discourse. But instantiating it into discourse may prove challenging and will rely on regular de-linking from unqualified usages of “human” (see everyday term: “human”).

Many theorists offer frameworks for understanding this sort of more-than-human cultural negotiation.[13] One idea I have for meaningfully acknowledging non-anthropocentric water culture is to start speaking about “actors” vs “agents” in the water cycle in the manner offered by N. Kathryn Hayles. For the rest of this entry, I will attempt to apply Hayles’ vocabulary to the water cycle. This application, I hope, opens up helpful questions for further consideration of a non-anthropocentric water culture. (Before reading what follows, I suggest you take a look at the frame: Culture as Non-Anthropocentric).

 “Actors vs agents”  

In order to understand “actors” vs “agents” within the water cycle, we need to first understand Hayle’s concept of cognizer/noncognizer interpenetration (C/NC) as a replacement for the human/nonhuman binary (H/NH). This distinction foregrounds cognition as a primary analytical category, but it is not rigid, she insists—it emphasizes that all life forms have cognitive capacities, some forms which exceed that of humans. 

Instead of a binary, Hayles’ proposes a pyramid to understand “cognition,” which she broadly defines as “a process that interprets information within contexts that connect it with meaning.”[14] The top third of the pyramid encompasses higher forms of cognition, that is, modes of conscious and unconscious awareness that we typically think of making up a “sense of self.”[15] The middle third of the pyramid encompasses nonconscious cognition (outputs which can be fed forward to consciousness, like chemical and electrical signals in the human body, for example). Nonconscious cognition in humans evolved first and consciousness and the unconscious were subsequently built on top. The bottom third encompasses material processes. These processes are not cognitive, but are dynamic actions through which all the above cognitive activities emerge. From Hayles’ pyramind, we can draw important distinctions between cognizers/noncognizers.  

The top two thirds of the pyramid, cognizers are actors capable of making choices and thus subject to moral and ethical scrutiny. For Hayles, cognizers include all human life, biological life, and many technical systems (specifically computational media).[16] For example, the more lively cognizers are humans and other biological life forms with the ability to interpret information, make choices, and generate context-dependent meaning; in turn, they have special functions: flexibility, adaptability, and evolvability.[17] The less lively cognizers are “smart” technologies that also possesses these abilities. So my phone cognizes all the time. My water bottle does not—yet. Smart technologies with the special ability to evolve are rapidly being installed into otherwise noncognizant technology. Soon most of our noncognizant technologies, though not alive, will be cognizant with us. Taken together, cognizers make up cognitive assemblages, “complex human-technical assemblages in which cognition and decision-making powers are distributed throughout the system.”[18]

The bottom third of the pyramid, noncognizers are agents shaping the world. however, they are incapable of making choices. Think of inanimate objects and material processes, like oxygen, tornados, water, waves, electricity. A tornado may blow down a house, but it didn’t make the choice to blow down the house instead of the school.[19] Hayles would say that such elements aren’t alive. But these elemental agents may assist cognition. In fact, the interpenetration between cognizers and noncognizers—all three parts of the pyramid—is exemplified by the fact human, plant, animal, and technical cognizers interact with each other as well as with noncognizing objects and material forces. Hayles writes that continual and pervasive interactions “flow through, within, and beyond the humans, nonhumans, cognizers, noncognizers, and material processes that make up our world.”[20]

Given that Hayles' overall purpose is a paradigmatic shift in how we think about human cognition in relation to planetary cognitive ecologies,[21] the creation of cognizer/noncognizer interpenetration (C/NC) shifts our thinking about how human cultures respond to the water cycle in at least three ways, opening up the possibility for new questions that grapple with water culture as entangled human and non-human phenomena.

First, moving from H/NH to C/NC transforms nonhuman participants in the water cycle from a static backdrop in our imagination to dynamic nonhuman agents and actors (water, water tech, plants, animals). This conceptual shift moves nonhumans from the background to the foreground of the problem of water scarcity. For Hayles, water is an agent, and computerized water technology, plants, and animals are actors in the water cycle. Hayles writes that water “exercises agency through such phenomena as waterfalls, rain, snow, and ice; incorporated into biological bodies, it provides fluids essential for life; run through a turbine, it contributes to the cognitions and effectiveness of a computerized hydroelectric power system.”[22] What does the water cycle and water scarcity mean if it is expressing the agency of water itself? In what ways does the agency of water infrastructure impede the agency of water itself? What does the distribution of the water cycle mean for humans and water technology if water creates the conditions for cognitive processes that govern it as a substance? What choices do plants, animals, and/or water technology each make to support or disrupt the water cycle? 

Second, moving from H/NH to C/NC shifts the responsibility of a healthy water cycle from individual human users to cognitive assemblages. Water conservation messages like “slow the flow” for individual human users become less compelling in this model when we open our eyes to material and nonconscious infrastructures shaping human behavior. For Hayles, we ought to recognize human cognition for its “uniquely valuable potential, without insisting that human cognition is the whole of cognition or that it is unaffected by the technical cognizers that interpenetrate it.”[23] Shifting our attention to nonconscious actors, C/NC delimits what is and is not part of a cognitive assemblage,[24] and thus what can and cannot be held accountable for a given outcome/process of that assemblage—like water scarcity. In turn, humans, water technology, plants, and animals may be held accountable as a collection of water actors in the water cycle. They make up a cognitive assemblage in which choices about water are cognitively distributed. How much of the water cycle is a cognitive assemblage versus material force? How do our diagrams of the water cycle change if understood as a cognitive assemblage, directed by water actors? How does the problem of water scarcity shift if revealed as a problem for all cognizers? 

Third, and finally, shifting from H/NH to C/NC can help environmentalists and scholars resist neoliberal and colonial impulses in environmentalism, countering with proposals for systemic interventions through inflection points,[25] points at which systemic dynamics can be decisively transformed to send the cognitive assemblage in a different direction.[26] For example, neither neoliberal nor colonial approaches make as much sense in complex cognitive assemblages. First, cognitive assemblages undermine neoliberal approaches by privileging distributed cognition.[27]Second, cognitive assemblages undermine colonial approaches by showing how the “control” of complex systems is a ruse to begin with. In a cognitive assemblage, “cognition is too distributed, agency is exercised through too many actors, and the interactions are too recursive and complex for any simple notions of control to obtain.”[28] For Hayles, “Instead of control, effective modes of intervention seek for inflection points.”[29] As such, questions like the following make more sense: At a given time/place, what are the inflection points for the local and the global water cycle? If the water cycle is a cognitive assemblage, what are its inflection points? How might the cognitive assemblage be racially coded?[30] What are the limits and potential of human actors in the assemblage? What choices are nonconscious water technologies making to enable harm the water cycle? In what ways might nonconscious water technologies facilitate harmful human choices with respect to the water cycle? 

(4) Kincentric Water Culture

This definition is forthcoming and something I’m not ready to share. The intention of this definition, however, will be to center Indigenous thought and theory instead of making the detour through Western theory to arrive at a more-than-human definition of culture.

[1] Shiva, “From Water Crisis to Water Culture: Dr. Vandana Shiva an Interview by Andy Opel,” 500.

[2] Shiva, 500.

[3] Shiva, 500.

[4] Shiva, 500.

[5] Shiva, 503.

[6] Pezzullo writes, “This ecological sense of interconnectedness, more colloquially referred to today as ‘the environment,’ runs counter to hegemonic Western, liberal, and capitalistic epistemological legacies, such as anthropocentrism and autonomous individuality.” Pezzullo, Toxic Tourism: Rhetorics of Pollution, Travel, and Environmental Justice, 10.

[7] Shiva, “From Water Crisis to Water Culture: Dr. Vandana Shiva an Interview by Andy Opel,” 503. Shiva writes that “high prices” for water and “high value” of water are not the same thing (506). One might charge high prices for water but value it very low by treating it as a commodity instead of the basis of life itself. To value water highly is to speak of water as connected to the water cycle, as folks in danger of losing their water will tell you. (506).

[8] Shiva, 498–99.

[9] This reading of “water culture” may resonate with “place-integrated culturescapes” given that both understand environmental conflicts as fueled by both discourse and attachment to place, prioritizing analysis of discourse that is especially local. See: Rachel Shellabarger et al., “The Influence of Place Meanings on Conservation and Human Rights in the Arizona Sonora Borderlands,” Environmental Communication 6, no. 3 (September 1, 2012): 383–402, https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2012.688059.

[10] This reading of “water culture” may resonate with “place-integrated culturescapes” given that both understand environmental conflicts as fueled by both discourse and attachment to place, prioritizing analysis of discourse that is especially local. See: Shellabarger et al., “The Influence of Place Meanings on Conservation and Human Rights in the Arizona Sonora Borderlands.”

[11] This is one of three categories of usage Williams explains in Keywords. “Culture” (1) describes a general process of intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic development; (2) indicates a particular way of life, whether or a people, a period, a group, or humanity in general; and/or (3) describes the works and practices of intellectual and artistic activity, 90-91. 

[12] See also “culture as non-anthropocentric” on this website for an explanation of how this definition combines cultural studies and Indigenous knowledge. Jennifer Daryl Slack, “RESISTING ECOCULTURAL STUDIES,” Cultural Studies 22, no. 3–4 (May 1, 2008): 477–97, https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380802012575; Kyle Whyte, “Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and Environmental Injustice,” Environment and Society 9, no. 1 (2018): 125–44, https://doi.org/10.3167/ares.2018.090109.

[13] Many theorists contend with how negotiations within these cultures might take place between humans and nonhumans. Animal Rhetoric: George A. Kennedy, “A Hoot in the Dark: The Evolution of General Rhetoric,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 25, no. 1 (1992): 1–21.Material feminisms and new materialism: Laurie E. Gries, “In Defense of Rhetoric, Plants, and New Materialism,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 47, no. 5 (2017): 437; Stacy Alaimo and Susan J. Hekman, Material Feminisms, Book, Whole (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008). Indigenous knowledge: Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, First, Book, Whole (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Milkweed Editions, 2013); Kyle Whyte and Chris Cuomo, “Ethics of Caring in Environmental Ethics: Indigenous and Feminist Philosophies,” in Oxford Handbook of Environmental Ethics, 2017. Alternative symbolics: Julie Kalil Schutten and Richard A. Rogers, “Magick as an Alternative Symbolic: Enacting Transhuman Dialogs,” Environmental Communication: A Journal of Nature and Culture 5, no. 3 (2011): 261–80, https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2011.583261; David Abram, Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (New York: Vintage Books, 2011); Eduardo Kohn, How Forests Think: Toward an Anthropology beyond the Human, Book, Whole (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). Ecopsychology: Andy Fisher, Radical Ecopsychology: Psychology in the Service of Life (SUNY Press, 2012); Elizabeth Dickinson, “The Misdiagnosis: Rethinking ‘Nature-Deficit Disorder,’” Environmental Communication 7, no. 3 (September 1, 2013): 315–35, https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2013.802704.

[14] Hayles, Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious, 22.

[15] Hayles, 27.

[16] Hayles, 30.

[17] Hayles, 29.

[18] Hayles, 4.

[19] Hayles, 30–31.

[20] Hayles, 33.

[21] “Added together, these innovations amount to nothing less than a paradigm shift in how we think about human cognition in relation to planetary cognitive ecologies, how we analyze the operations and ethical implications of human-technical assemblages, and how we imagine the role that the humanities can and should play in assessing these effects.” Hayles, 39.

[22] Hayles, 32.

[23] Hayles, 136.

[24] “A cognitive assemblage has distinctive properties not present in how they use the term. In particular, a cognitive assemblage emphasizes the flow of information through a system and the choices and decisions that create, modify, and interpret the flow” (116).

[25] For how the human/nonhuman binary supports neoliberal and colonial discourses, consider how neoliberalism relies on “rational” over embodied decisions and how colonialism relies on racial (and class) hierarchies to justify dispossession of land and water. 

[26] For more on inflection points, Hayles writes: “First, all these thinkers, activists, and writers spent the time and conceptual resources necessary to understand the system in detail, whether it is computational regimes, HFT, processual philosophy, institutional racism, or posthumanist studies. Only if the system in question is interrogated closely and researched thoroughly can the inflection points be located. Second, once the inflection points are determined, the next issue is how to introduce change so as to transform the systemic dynamics. Third, and perhaps most important, these theorists, activists, and writers draw upon prior visions of fair play, justice, sustainability, and environmental ethics to determine the kinds of trajectories they want the system to enact as a result of their interventions. These are typically not found within the system itself but come from prior commitments to ethical responsibilities and positive futures.” Hayles, 204. 

[27] I’ll qualify this claim by saying that individual roles of human designer are still able “to envision and evaluate ethical and moral consequences in the context of human sociality and world horizons that are the distinctive contributions of human conscious and nonconscious cognitions.” Hayles, 136. 

[28] Hayles, Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious, 203.

[29] Hayles, 203.

[30] How does the cognitive assemblage afford certain races or ethnicities with water and others without water? See, for example, Ruha Benjamin, Race after Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code, Book, Whole (Cambridge, UK;Medford, MA; Polity, 2019).