Paper short abstract:

In Jerusalem - a city in a region defined by water scarcity and its politics - desalination shifts concerns about access to quality. This paper explores what this shift does, what it conceals, and how the Anthropocene, examined from this setting, redraws the boundaries of responsibility.

Paper long abstract:

What does the Anthropocene look like in Jerusalem? A city where climate change is rarely at the forefront - eclipsed by urgent stories of daily survival - it is also located in a region defined by water scarcity and water politics, all the while boasting cutting edge water technology. Drawing on a work-in-progress ethnography of care and water infrastructure in Jerusalem, this paper explores how emerging water technologies intimately frame broader questions of responsibility in this time of 'transition'.

The story begins with the desalination megaprojects on the coast and water-saving processes which shape water in Jerusalem. Reliance on these infrastructures means that those who use and manage Israeli utilities worry less about water access, but instead its quality. Because of its properties, water can be a site for contamination just as much as public health. A team at the Jerusalem water utility is dedicated to best practice in monitoring health and safety across the system. Public duty is practiced through digital models, sensors, and standardised lab tests.

But does responsibility enacted in this mediated way have limits or unintended consequences? How does it intersect with the mode of water management: centralisation, privatisation, and alchemy-like industrial-scale generation? How does this intervene in other places across the city where water is important for care: where it is vital for social relations, healing and mythology, or where alternative infrastructures are revived, created, or quietly continued? And if desalination is changing the contours of responsibility, how might we reconceive of the Anthropocene?