Abstract
In this article, we explore elements of the literature on practices and the everyday to provide reference points for water researchers. We cast a wide net in recognition of the complex and multifaceted nature of human relationships to water that cannot be reduced to a single perspective. The article begins with the work of prominent French theorists including Foucault, Lefebvre, Bourdieu and de Certeau. Each grapples with the interrelationship between wider socio-political processes and practice in different ways. This leads us to pragmatism and non-representational theory in the second section, which argue that to understand socio-political processes, one must begin from practices. In the third section, we engage with work on practices in conditions of instability and precarity, which are widespread under contemporary conditions of post-colonial neoliberalism, and the role of “care” in mitigating their effects. In section four, we discuss the scholarship and practice of Silvia Rivera-Cusicanqui, who explores and extends many of the approaches elaborated above. The article concludes with a reflection on what this means for engaging with the multiple realities and ways of living with water.
Highlights
This article explores a range of perspectives on practices and the everyday in an effort to provide reference points for work on governing water
We refer to governing water—as opposed to water governance or management—following Bolivian sociologist Silvia Rivera-Cusicanqui’s [1] warning against the hidden effects of dominant concepts that conceal lived reality
Concerned with intersections of class, ethnic and gendered identities in the production of inequality, Aymara scholar Silvia Rivera-Cusicanqui of Bolivia offers a method for thinking about practices and the everyday, through the metaphor of ch’ixi
Summary
This article explores a range of perspectives on practices and the everyday in an effort to provide reference points for work on governing water. It may begin with contrasting black and white threads, that when woven together form points that appear grey from a distance but yet regain their distinctness when approached anew In this spirit, Rivera-Cusicanqui insists on always working with ideas in the making, from fragments, by favouring listening and learning through engagement in practice. This approach, while unique, has echoes with some of the other work explored below It has threads in common with Lefebvre’s view that practices must be approached from a dialectics of unresolved tensions that somehow form a whole [3], and with pragmatic and non-representational perspectives, which insist that knowledge must begin from practices, from the observation of the everyday and not from any pre-established theoretical perspective [4,5]. Instead of trying to create a uniform or harmonious framework, we recognize difference, and leave it unresolved
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