Water and the Sociological Imagination
A letter to my local representative in the midst of a drought.
Note: A Sample Essay/Letter for an Assignment in Introduction to Sociology; also, a letter that will be emailed to a specific person/town, but whose name remains anonymous for the internet.
Dear Council Woman Whose Name Shall Remain Anonymous,
I am writing to you as a resident of this village who is concerned about water.
I come to this in a roundabout way. See, I’ve been focused on trying to drink more water. It’s something that I’ve often ignored, enjoying sodas and seltzers more, but now I know that staying hydrated is all-around good for my health. Drinking water helps my body temperature, my joints, my cells, my sleep, and my mood, to name just a few benefits of hydration. And as a healthier person, I can more effectively contribute to my community!
But let’s be honest, you are not on the city council in order to improve my health. Or, rather, your role is to improve my health through a focus on the health of all the residents in our shared town. This is what C. Wright Mills refers to as the “sociological imagination.” The shift in focus from the realm of “personal troubles” (my own personal hydration) to that of “public issues,” in this case, in the form of the entire town’s access to drinking water.
I recognize that my ability to attempt to improve my personal health through more regular hydration is a result of my access to safe drinking water. Actually, I’m so used to having access to safe drinking water it’s easy for me to take it for granted. Now that I know about concepts like “organic solidarity” (Durkheim) and “dependency relations” (Scott) I can now see that there is a whole entire system in place, that I/we are dependent upon, which makes it possible for me to drink water. To name just a few: engineers, plumbers, chemists, urban planners, and city managers like you make it possible for me to drink water every day. Clearly, I’m not “lifting myself up by my bootstraps,” because what Durkheim has taught me is that we all have important things to contribute to the functioning of the overarching whole. In fact, someone else made my bootstraps! I work at Best Buy.
As I’m drinking more water, however, I can’t help but think about all the people in the world who do not have access to safe drinking water. According to the CDC, 2 billion people do not have access to drinking water at home. They report that “universal access to safe drinking water, adequate sanitation, and hygiene has the potential to reduce the global disease burden by 10%. This access is shaped by privilege and global stratification. We live in the United States, in particular in the Midwest, where we haven’t had to face water-based hardships. Certainly, this is a privilege of living in a wealthy nation, but it’s important that we don’t turn a blind eye to what’s happening “over there,” because humans everywhere need water to survive. This isn’t an “us/them” issue, but a “we” issue. According to Patricia Hill Collins, part of developing a “sociological imagination” is building empathy.
As I write this letter, Illinois is in the midst of a drought. Where we live in the suburbs, it’s considered to be a “severe drought,” while much of the state is in “moderate drought.” This impacts crops, of course, but also increases the risk of fire, and of course, could lead to water shortages. I read that Gibson City has decided to prohibit the watering of lawns.
This, councilwoman who shall remain anonymous, is really why I am writing you. I would like you to encourage the rest of the city council to consider such a ban. Lawns are not as important as access to drinking water and sanitation, and we should be focused on protecting the latter, not the former. Lawns, it turns out, are bad for the environment. They soak up lots of water but with only ornamental benefits. Watering lawns could be thought of as a form of “conspicuous consumption,” where having a well-manicured lawn is a symbol of social status. We need greater health more than we need status symbols. Let our glowing skin from hydration be our new status symbol! Never mind that people use fossil fuels for lawn maintenance (maybe you should also consider a town ordinance that requires battery-powered leaf blowers and lawnmowers! It’s a thing!).
Learning more about water at a systemic level means I understand that small decisions that I make at the micro-level, like not watering my lawn or eating less meat (how about how much water is used up supporting livestock! No wonder the U.S. is facing more water shortages/crises!), can help benefit the collective, the macro-level of society.
Protecting water in our town is important. We might not be in the midst of a crisis now, but if we utilize our “sociological imaginations” it’s easy to see that we should act now so that we can protect water access for future residents. Please consider banning watering lawns, at the very least during this drought. Create information for residents on alternate ways to decorate our yards, such as relying on a drought-resistant ground cover like clover. Another good option is to ban gas-reliant lawn equipment, or at least give residents incentives to switch over to electric, or, be a model to residents by transitioning all of the city’s equipment to electric like other towns are doing. Gibson City might have started the watering ban, but others, like Decatur and Rockford, have followed suit. It’s time our town got on board to protect water and institute such a ban.
I appreciate you taking the time to read this letter.
Sincerely,
Your voting constituent, Monica Edwards
