Consumer Protest: Water

Humans consume water in many ways. In addition to meeting essential daily needs, such as drinking, cleansing, cooking, or producing food, water is also consumed in leisure activities, such as fishing and other water-related sports, or through the enjoyment of urban waterscapes. In this general sense, human beings have always consumed water. More narrowly, the vending and consumption of drinkable water has also been long practiced by humans, as suggested by historical records of private water vending in societies as dissimilar as the Aztecs and the Arabs. However, in the context of this entry, we are only concerned with the emergence of the water consumer as a social category since the expansion of domestic urban water services from the late-eighteenth century onward. The emergence of a consumer culture in relation to basic urban services, such as water supply and sewerage, contributed to the rising awareness among the population about the material implications of the access to these services (e.g., for living standards), as well as about the social and political considerations associated with their organization and control. Thus, networked water consumption in urban centers opened new spaces for citizen participation, often in the form of social protest, as water consumers became increasingly aware of the potential political importance of their actions.

It is worth highlighting that water consumption has not received much attention within the field of consumption research until recently, which may be explained perhaps by the fact that although water consumption is a permanent and universal human necessity, like breathing, it tends to be largely inconspicuous. In this connection, it is important to remark that the concept of “consumer” in relation to domestic water use has to be qualified, perhaps with the exception of bottled water consumption. This is relevant because one of the key characteristics associated with modern consumers, the capacity to make informed consumption choices between alternative products, has rarely been available to water users. This has been the case mainly for two reasons: first, humans cannot avoid consuming water; at best they can control the volumes and the quality of the water they consume. Second, the provision of water services has historically taken the form of a monopoly, whether publicly or privately owned and managed, which means that choice of provider has not been an option available to consumers. In fact, modern domestic water users have always been, for the most part, captive consumers, which has often prompted bitter social confrontations.