Available From UC Press

Around 2004, members of governmental and nongovernmental organizations, science institutes, and private companies throughout India began brainstorming and then experimenting with small-scale treatment systems that could produce usable water from wastewater. Through detailed case studies, Microbial Machines describes how residents, workers, and scientists interact with technology, science, and engineering during the processes of treatment and reuse. Using a human-machine-microbe framework, Kelly Alley explores the ways that people's sensory perceptions of water—including disgust—are dynamic and how people use machines and microbes to digest wastewater. A better understanding of how the human and nonhuman interact in these processes will enable people to generate more effective methods for treating and reusing wastewater. While decentralized wastewater treatment systems may not be a perfect solution, they alleviate resource stress in regions that are particularly hard hit by climate change. These case studies have broad relevance for solving similar problems in many other places around the world.

Kelly D. Alley is Alma Holladay Professor Emerita of Anthropology at Auburn University and Associate Editor of Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Water (WIREs Water).

"This book offers an excellent model of how a social anthropologist can undertake fieldwork and analyze a very technical topic in understandable language. It will be highly useful to students, academics, and practitioners in environmental science."—Harry Blair, Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Bucknell University

"An epidemic of waste is piling through every nook and cranny of the world, just as climate change stalks us. India is struggling to accommodate its population without threatening environmental sustainability, endangering species of flora and fauna, and desperately seeking means to save the rivers that have been turned into murky drains carrying wastewater. This book arrives at this historic moment of wastewater crisis to tell stories of how small initiatives can work wonders for local communities. Through her sophisticated treatment of anthropological engagement with one of the most pressing problems facing India, Kelly Alley leaves an ineffaceable impression of wastewater as a symbol of the country's river crisis but also directs the readers to solutions."—Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt, coauthor of Dancing with the River: People and Life on the Chars of South Asia