Details

City Water Matters


City Water Matters

Cultures, Practices and Entanglements of Urban Water

von: Sophie Watson

42,79 €

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan
Format: PDF
Veröffentl.: 29.06.2019
ISBN/EAN: 9789811378928
Sprache: englisch

Dieses eBook enthält ein Wasserzeichen.

Beschreibungen

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.
<div>Chapter 1. City Water matters: Cultures, Practices and Entanglements of Urban Water:<br></div><div>An Introduction.- Chapter 2. Public Water features: assembling publics, enlivening spaces, promoting regeneration.- Chapter 3. Consuming Water: habits, rituals and state interventions.- Chapter 4.&nbsp;River Powers: assembling publics, connections and materials in a global city.- Chapter 5. Embodied water entanglements: sex/gender, race/ethnicity and class urban practices&nbsp;of cleanliness and sanitation.- Chapter 6. Public waters: the passions, pleasures and politics of bathing in the city.- Chapter 7. Differentiating Water: Cultural Practices and Contestations.- Chapter 8. Water Traces in Urban Space.- Chapter 9. A Final Word.</div>
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 <i>The New Blackwell Companion to the City</i> (with Gary Bridge) and <i>City Publics: the (dis)enchantments of Urban Encounters</i>.
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.
Uses strong ethnographic and historical research to illuminate an important but widely-neglected topic – the role of water in city life Uniquely moves between culturalist, political-economic and materialist approaches to thinking about and with water Provides an especially lively portrait of city waters – revealing its complexity and slipperiness in a concrete manner Carefully considers both the democratic or democratizing potentials and uses of water, as well as to the fraught dilemmas which surround it – including those of climate change and scarcity
<i>“City Water Matters</i> 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)<p>“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)</p>

<p>“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.” (<b>Professor Les Back</b>, Goldsmiths, University of London)</p>

Diese Produkte könnten Sie auch interessieren: