Liquid passions

Bodies, Publics and City Waters

Bibliographic Data

ID3977672
AuthorsSophie Watson (0000-0002-1919-1498, Department of Sociology, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK, corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume20
Issue7
Pages960-980
Publication date2019-09-02
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocial & Cultural Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1464-9365 • E-ISSN: 1470-1197
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14649365.2017.1404121
OpenAlexW2769068970
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited38

This article explores water's capacities as a vibrant matter with specific properties that generates passions, attachments and a sense of belonging, and which enrols bodies in new connections, socialities, alliances and politics in unpredictable ways. Based on research into practices and engagements with water in a large urban public space the paper builds on studies of blue space. It concludes that water has the capacity to enhance a sense of well-being in those that swim in it and to mobilise a very particular sense of embodiment which gives this form of public space its distinctiveness constituting new forms of sociality and connections amongst diverse individuals. It seeks to do this by paying attention to the experiences of things themselves and the active participation of nonhuman forces in events and the 'vital materiality' that runs through and across bodies both human and non-human. The article also explores water's capacity to be constituted and defined by experts as dangerous and risky matter, and to thus engender political associations and connections amongst diverse groups who seek to oppose such expert interventions

Aesthetics · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Materiality (auditing · Optimal distinctiveness theory · Passions · Political science · Politics · Premise · Public space · Publics · Sociality · Sociology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Posthumanist Ethics and Activism · Psychology · Social Psychology · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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