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1. Trust/distrust in Multi-disciplinary Collaboration: Some Feminist Reflections

   https://doi.org/10.28968/cftt.v6i2.32956  

   Leighton, Mary; Roberts, Elizabeth F (November 2020, Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience)

   null (Ed.)

   In this paper we theorize trust as emerging in different material/infrastructural and epistemic realities as part of our multidisciplinary collaboration about water, called Neighborhood Environments as Socio-Techno-Bio Systems: Water Quality, Public Trust, and Health in Mexico City (NESTSMX)”. This collaboration, led by feminist anthropologists, brings together anthropology, environmental-public health, and environmental engineering researchers to analyze how neighborhoods as “socio-techno-bio systems” shape how people trust or distrust water. Our project follows the infrastructures and social structures that move water in and out of neighborhoods, households, and bodies making them trust it more or less. At the same time our multi-disciplinary research team inhabits different epistemic research environments that creates tensions about how we make knowledge and what counts as data. Trust and distrust then shapes how we constitute both our object of inquiry and how we know it. 

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2. Water, economic systems, and mental health: A review of theorized relationships

   https://doi.org/10.1079/cabireviews202217042  

   Choudhary, Neetu; Brewis, Alexandra; Beresford, Melissa; Workman, Cassandra; Wutich, Amber (October 2022, CABI Reviews)

   Abstract Water insecurity—the lack of access to sufficient, safe water to meet all household needs—is an escalating challenge in all world regions. It is also associated with unfavorable mental health outcomes, like anxiety and depression. Often situated in the context of drought or general water scarcity, connections between water and mental health often manifest out of the unique characteristics of water—as an important economic and household resource, and one managed primarily by women. This article identifies recognized and theorized pathways between water insecurity and common mental health conditions, as mediated by broader socioeconomic systems in which households are embedded. To this end, we synthesize and connect different literature sets, including limited economic studies in a resource insecurity framework and a small but authoritative body of ethnographic literature. Our review identifies multiple proximate candidate pathways connecting water insecurity with mental health outcomes including community conflicts and/or perceived injustice around water sharing and upkeep, agricultural decline and unemployment, food insecurity or distress migration, decreased water intake, non-exposure to blue spaces, and stress around water management. The gendered role of water management is an overlapping theme across pathways, exposing women disproportionately to forms of conflict, violence, and injustice associated with the risk of common mental illness. In general, there are varied forms of marginalization that people experience within water-insecure contexts. Greater engagement between economics and other disciplines can lend additional theoretical pathways to empirically test the water and mental health connections, associated with people’s water insecurity experiences. 

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3. Gender identities, water insecurity, and risk: Re‐theorizing the connections for a gender‐inclusive toolkit for water insecurity research

   https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1685  

   Brewis, Alexandra; DuBois, L_Zachary; Wutich, Amber; Adams, Ellis_Adjei; Dickin, Sarah; Elliott, Susan_J; Empinotti, Vanessa_Lucena; Harris, Leila_M; Ilboudo_Nébié, Elisabeth; Korzenevica, Marina (August 2023, WIREs Water)

   Abstract Informed by decades of literature, water interventions increasingly deploy “gender‐sensitive” or even “gender transformative” approaches that seek to redress the disproportionate harms women face from water insecurity. These efforts recognize the role of gendered social norms and unequal power relations but often focus narrowly on the differences and dynamics between cisgender (cis) men and women. This approach renders less visible the ways that living with water insecurity can differentially affect all individuals through the dynamics of gender, sexuality, and linked intersecting identities. Here, we first share a conceptual toolkit that explains gender as fluid, negotiated, and diverse beyond the cis‐binary. Using this as a starting point, we then review what is known and can be theorized from current literature, identifying limited observations from water‐insecure communities to identify examples of contexts where gendered mechanisms (such as social norms) differentiate experiences of water insecurity, such as elevating risks of social stigma, physical harm, or psychological distress. We then apply this approach to consider expanded ways to include transgender, non‐binary, and gender and sexual diversity to deepen, nuance and expand key thematics and approaches for water insecurity research. Reconceptualizing gender in these ways widens theoretical possibilities, changes how we collect data, and imagines new possibilities for effective and just water interventions. This article is categorized under:Human Water > Value of WaterEngineering Water > Water, Health, and SanitationHuman Water > Water as Imagined and RepresentedHuman Water > Methods 

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4. Variations in household water affordability and water insecurity: An intersectional perspective from 18 low- and middle-income countries

   https://doi.org/10.1177/26349825231156900  

   Shah, Sameer H; Harris, Leila M; Menghwani, Vikas; Stoler, Justin; Brewis, Alexandra; Miller, Joshua D; Workman, Cassandra L; Adams, Ellis Adjei; Pearson, Amber L; Hagaman, Ashley; et al (January 2023, Environment and Planning F)

   Compounding systems of marginalization differentiate and shape water-related risks. Yet, quantitative water security scholarship rarely assesses such risks through intersectionality, a paradigm that conceptualizes and examines racial, gendered, class, and other oppressions as interdependent. Using an intersectionality approach, we analyze the relationships between household head gender and self-reported socio-economic status, and water affordability (proportion of monthly income spent on water) and water insecurity (a composite measure of 11 self-reported experiences) for over 4000 households across 18 low- and middle-income countries in Central and South America, Africa, and Asia. Interaction terms and composite categorical variables were included in regression models, adjusting for putative confounders. Among households with a high socio-economic status, the proportion of monthly income spent on water differed by household head gender. In contrast, greater household water insecurity was associated with lower socio-economic status and did not meaningfully vary by the gender of the household head. We contextualize and interpret these experiences through larger systems of power and privilege. Overall, our results provide evidence of broad intersectional patterns from diverse sites, while indicating that their nature and magnitude depend on local contexts. Through a critical reflection on the study’s value and limitations, including the operationalization of social contexts across different sites, we propose methodological approaches to advance multi-sited and quantitative intersectional research on water affordability and water insecurity. These approaches include developing scale-appropriate models, analyzing complementarities and differences between site-specific and multi-sited data, collecting data on gendered power relations, and measuring the impacts of household water insecurity. 

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5. Identity Theft, Trust Breaches, and the Production of Economic Insecurity

   https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224231189895  

   Brensinger, Jordan (August 2023, American Sociological Review)

   Across various domains of social life, organizational reliance on personal data and exposure to unanticipated financial hardship have transformed Americans’ life chances and access to opportunities. This article examines an area where they intersect: the hardship caused by breakdowns in information systems. I focus on the case of identity theft, showing how that event—experienced by tens of millions of Americans annually—contributes to economic insecurity. To do so, I first develop a theory of insecurity that links feelings of precariousness to breaches of trust at three levels: interpersonal, organizational, and systemic. Drawing on an original qualitative study of identity theft resolution, I find that most victims worried about their financial lives because they could no longer count on certain people, organizations, or systems. Beneath this commonality, race and class informed feelings of insecurity and associated coping strategies following identity theft. Low-income people and people of color tended to direct suspicion at personal networks and report ending relationships and informal assistance. In contrast, middle- and upper-income and White individuals disproportionately blamed organizations and demanded their protection. These findings—along with the trust-based theory that helped make them visible—have important implications for the study of insecurity, inequality, and trust in the information age. 

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