Everyday practices, everyday water: From Foucault to Rivera-Cusicanqui (with a few stops in between)

Abstract

In this article, we explore elements of the literature on practices and the everyday to provide reference points forwater researchers. We cast awide net in recognition of the complex andmultifaceted nature of human relationships towater 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 grappleswith the interrelationship betweenwider 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.