My current project, supported by a fellowship from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, is an investigation of the interaction of ecological knowledge and infrastructure planning in California. The project begins with the observation that, while urban existence is deeply dependent upon the functioning of life support systems such as water infrastructure, the work of technical experts to plan and manage the operations of these systems is typically hidden from view. Moreover, while decisions on how to respond to a future of water scarcity are often cast as technical problems to be addressed by engineers, any proposed solution enters a fraught social, political and scientific field. In California, the theme of ecological crisis is at the center of political contestation over the future of water. This project investigates how scientific knowledge about ecological crisis – for example, about the effects of decreasing water flows on endangered fish species – is produced, and how such knowledge enters into regulatory debates over water provision. A first article coming out of this project, entitled “The Ecological Indicator: Tracking Species Collapse in Arid California,” was published in 2016 in the journal Public Culture.
