Catch‐all technopolitics

AbstractTap water's availability, accessibility, and biological safety do not automatically translate into social acceptance. Most Americans no longer drink water directly from the tap but rely on either filters or bottled water. As demonstrated by fieldwork among New York City water‐filter users, filters have the power to restore tap water's acceptability, making this an interesting site to examine the imagined qualities of water and the technopolitics of filtration. Such an examination allows the ethnographic gaze to attend to both the monumental and mundane operations of infrastructures. Unlike other mediating technologies, water filters have a salient catch‐all quality, one that allows filters in the US to participate in a plurality of hydrosocial situations. They furthermore mediate multiple worries and projects around tap water, and they give a semblance of control to users equipped with diverse understandings of how filters function.