In this study, I investigate how state-dominated rural household water governance affects local responses to water-related risks during extreme weather events and environmental changes in rural China. This form of governance is centralized and standardized, manifested in its material and moral dimensions: (1) modern technology and infrastructure, involving facilities for centralized and standardized water access, quality management, and household water use; and (2) morality, represented by the norms of centralized and standardized water purification in managing water quality and in the installation of standardized modern flush toilets which increases household water use as opposed to traditional practices. Based upon ethnographic fieldwork, I examine the water-related risks associated with such governance during droughts, cold snaps, and changes in land use around water sources, and how villagers did not demand state intervention but instead turned to alternative practices when possible, thus disengaging from different aspects of the state-dominated water governance. In their responses, villagers enhanced their resilience by increasing physical capacities to cope with tap water-related risks. Realizing that the state-dominated governance was inadequate, they cultivated their resilience to regain control in addressing risks. I thus term villagers’ responses as ‘resilient disengagement’, located between resignation and activism.
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