City Water Matters

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xi

   PDF

2. City Water Matters: Cultures, Practices and Entanglements of Urban Water—An Introduction

   • Sophie Watson

   Pages 1-14

3. Public Water Features: Assembling Publics, Enlivening Spaces, Promoting Regeneration

   • Sophie Watson

   Pages 15-41

4. Consuming Water: Habits, Rituals and State Interventions

   • Sophie Watson

   Pages 43-72

5. River Powers: Assembling Publics, Connections and Materials in a Global City

   • Sophie Watson

   Pages 73-104

6. Embodied Water Entanglements: Sex/Gender, Race/Ethnicity and Class Urban Sanitation Practices

   • Sophie Watson

   Pages 105-134

7. Public Waters: The Passions, Pleasures and Politics of Bathing in the City

   • Sophie Watson

   Pages 135-166

8. Differentiating Water: Cultural Practices and Contestations

   • Sophie Watson

   Pages 167-196

9. Water Traces in Urban Space

   • Sophie Watson

   Pages 197-213

10. Final Word

    • Sophie Watson

    Pages 215-216

Water is one of the most pressing concerns of our time. This book argues for the importance of water as a cultural object, and as a source of complex meanings and practices in everyday life, embedded in the socio-economics of local water provision. Each chapter aims to capture one element of water’s fluid existence in the world, as material object, cultural representation, as movement, as actor, as practice and as ritual. The book explores the interconnectedness of humans and non-humans, of nature and culture, and the complex entanglements of water in all its many forms; how water constitutes multiple differences and is implicated in relations of power, often invisible, but present nevertheless in the workings of daily life in all its rhythms and forms; and water’s capacity to assemble a multiplicity of publics and constitute new socialities and connections. Cities, and their inhabitants, without water will die, and so will their cultures.

• Urban Water
• Water Governance
• Water Management
• City Water
• Urban Studies

“City Water Matters is a book awash with stories that think with water—hydrating the urban imaginary and dissolving the “human” into liquid assemblages where surprising connections and responsibilities are surfaced. Sophie Watson’s book will make you think twice, and perhaps act differently, as you turn on the tap, clean out the drain, walk along a river or enjoy a public fountain.” (Katherine Gibson, Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University)

“This book is an important intervention in how we think about the political, social and ethical imperatives of water’s role in contemporary urban life and a great contribution to academic framing of the liquid city as both socio-technical in its complexities and an active protagonist in transforming the metropolis.” (Professor Michael Keith, Centre on Migration Policy and Society, University of Oxford)

“Thinking about the place of water in cities makes us ask different questions about the nature and quality city life. In this elegant and insightful book Sophie Watson shows us what we learn as a result from the politics of cleanliness to the pleasures of public bathing. A book full of originality and wonder.” (Professor Les Back, Goldsmiths, University of London)

• Sociology Department, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

  Sophie Watson

Sophie Watson is Professor of Sociology at the Open University. She has written extensively on cities, feminist theory, public space, street markets and multicultural differences and politics. Her publications include The New Blackwell Companion to the City (with Gary Bridge) and City Publics: the (dis)enchantments of Urban Encounters.

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