Dr Fiona Allon
University of Western Sydney
Water is the New Oil?: how to reconcile new values and old habits
In Neo Power: How the new economic order is changing the way we live, work and play, water is described as ‘the new oil’. The authors proclaim: ‘Expect to see water-based concepts and images incorporated into leading-edge design, luxury fashion and architecture as NEOs (the citizens of the new economic order) translate their explorations of water and its new symbolic value into consumption goods’.
Scarcity has certainly created a new value for water. Yet despite the increasing symbolic value of water in these kinds of future-oriented scenarios, many of the projects designed to actually cope with the water crisis are surprisingly past-oriented, harking back to modernity’s Promethean project of conquest and control and the principles of ‘Big Water’, as exemplified in the current plans for new dams, desal plants and so on.
Alongside this shift has emerged a growing practical and theoretical interest in water’s role in the activities of daily life. This is the terrain of everyday water, where values are rendered meaningful through daily practice, and where consumption patterns, habits and routines are collectively acted out and maintained, and also most likely to change.
This paper will focus on these kinds of contradictions, where new values meet old habits, and where old values meet new expectations of use.
Email: f.allon@uws.edu.au