Neighborhood Environments as Socio-Techno-Bio Systems

This group is composed by current team members of the NESTSMX project. The goal is to collectively analyse objects that are relevant for understanding the multiple social and material connections shaping the water situation in Mexico City.

NESTSMX ("Neighborhood Environments as Socio-Techno-Bio Systems: Water Quality, Public Trust, and Health in Mexico City”) is a multi-disciplinary collaborative project that brings together expertise from epidemiology, environmental engineering, anthropology and STS. The project develops new methods for exploring the complex relationship between water infrastructure, public trust in water quality and health across Mexico City neighborhoods. In order to study water trust in neighborhoods as socio-techno-biological systems we have developed household and neighborhood water audits which include the generation of epidemiological, epigenetic, and ethnographic data. During these audits members of the field team work with different objects such as cisterns, buccal swabs, hair samples, petri dishes, water quality tests, and fieldnotes to reveal the different water realities experienced by Mexico City residents. The team also uses multi-media to share these complex material realities with laboratory-based team members who don’t participate in field work.

Neighborhood Environments as Socio-Techno-Bio Systems members