Dams, plants, pipes and flows : from big water to everyday water

This paper focuses on patterns of domestic water consumption. It develops an approach that emphasises the importance of seeing water use as part of a broader set of consumption practices associated with the space of the home, the garden and suburban living. Water consumption is considered as a practice that is embodied and embedded in daily life. The paper also presents the project Everyday Water as a case study of recent cultural studies research on domestic water use. The cultural approach adopted in the project represents a significant departure from much conventional resource and environmental management-based work. The Everyday Water project moves away from thinking of water as a discrete resource or utility, and instead understands its consumption in terms of shifting definitions and uses of services, cultural traditions, and the intersection of everyday practices and expectations with sociotechnical systems. Through focusing on the specifics of people's patterns of consumption, the project aimed to increase our understanding of the wider cultural, social, and importantly, emotional field in which values and practices around domestic water exist. The paper also considers the possibility of different kinds of water cultures.