The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage
Have you ever wondered why your tap water tastes the way it does? The Taste of Water explores the increasing erasure of tastes from drinking water over the twentieth century. It asks how dramatic changes in municipal water treatment have altered consumers’ awareness of the environment their water comes from. Through examining the development of sensory expertise in the United States and France, this unique history uncovers the foundational role of palatability in shaping Western water treatment processes. By focusing on the relationship between taste and the environment, Christy Spackman shows how efforts to erase unwanted tastes and smells have transformed water into a highly industrialized food product divorced from its origins. The Taste of Water invites readers to question their own assumptions about what water does and should naturally taste like while exposing them to the invisible—but substantial—sensory labor involved in creating tap water.
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The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage
Have you ever wondered why your tap water tastes the way it does? The Taste of Water explores the increasing erasure of tastes from drinking water over the twentieth century. It asks how dramatic changes in municipal water treatment have altered consumers’ awareness of the environment their water comes from. Through examining the development of sensory expertise in the United States and France, this unique history uncovers the foundational role of palatability in shaping Western water treatment processes. By focusing on the relationship between taste and the environment, Christy Spackman shows how efforts to erase unwanted tastes and smells have transformed water into a highly industrialized food product divorced from its origins. The Taste of Water invites readers to question their own assumptions about what water does and should naturally taste like while exposing them to the invisible—but substantial—sensory labor involved in creating tap water.
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The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage

The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage

by Christy Spackman
The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage
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The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage

The Taste of Water: Sensory Perception and the Making of an Industrialized Beverage

by Christy Spackman

Overview

Have you ever wondered why your tap water tastes the way it does? The Taste of Water explores the increasing erasure of tastes from drinking water over the twentieth century. It asks how dramatic changes in municipal water treatment have altered consumers’ awareness of the environment their water comes from. Through examining the development of sensory expertise in the United States and France, this unique history uncovers the foundational role of palatability in shaping Western water treatment processes. By focusing on the relationship between taste and the environment, Christy Spackman shows how efforts to erase unwanted tastes and smells have transformed water into a highly industrialized food product divorced from its origins. The Taste of Water invites readers to question their own assumptions about what water does and should naturally taste like while exposing them to the invisible—but substantial—sensory labor involved in creating tap water.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780520393554
Publisher: University of California Press
Publication date: 12/05/2023
Series: Critical Environments: Nature, Science, and Politics , #15
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 306
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Christy Spackman is Assistant Professor of Art/Science at Arizona State University and Director of the Sensory Labor(atory), an experimental research collective dedicated to creatively disrupting longstanding sensory hierarchies.
 

Table of Contents

Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations

Introduction 
1. Industrial Terroir 
2. Making Flavor Molecular 
3. Future Sensing Bodies 
4. Theaters of Taste from the Boardroom to the Street 
5. Erasing Place: Industrial Terroir in the Twenty-First Century 
Conclusion: Flavor Stories 

Notes 
Bibliography 
Index 
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