When Catching the Rain: A Cultural Model Approach to Green Infrastructure in Water Governance

Implementation and formalization of green infrastructure across the United States is growing. While anthropological research on water infrastructure is expanding, to date, little of this work emphasizes the development of methods for analyzing the uptake of decentralized green infrastructures for water management. This article has two objectives. First, I outline a cultural model of rainwater harvesting to account for the more nuanced aspects leading to the uptake in policy and practice of this green infrastructure in Tucson, Arizona. Second, I expand the methods repertoire available to anthropologists by offering some signposts for advancing fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) in ethnographic research. While scholars and practitioners in environmental modeling and environmental management increasingly use this method, its potential for anthropological research has yet to be explored. A cognitive mapping approach to cultural models allows us to understand the underlying schemes driving local implementation of rainwater harvesting systems beyond the oft-repeated explanation that it is a form of green infrastructure for water conservation in semi-arid regions.