Number as an inventive frontier in knowing and working Australia’s water resources

Abstract

Taking number as material and semiotic, this article considers the enumeration of Australia’s water resources as both a form of audit and a form of marketing. It proposes that a scientific enumeration utilizes the relation one/many while an economic enumeration utilizes the relation whole/parts. Working the tension between these two forms of enumeration can be understood as an inventive frontier in contemporary Australian life.