Taking care in, and out of, the home

Care is a contested concept. By this I mean that there is no single definition or universally agreed-upon understanding of care or the work that is associated with providing care. Historically, care work has been framed by the practice of looking after the welfare of ‘vulnerable others’ (Cox, 2010: 114). This might include activities such as feeding a baby, doing housework, or caring for an elderly relative and other activities commonly associated with domestic spaces (Conradson, 2003). These are embodied practices – requiring hands-on work (for example, wiping a child’s bottom) that have a strong emotional component. It is not just manual labour, but it is emotional labour – as care work often requires a great deal of listening, reassuring and, of course, patience. Emotional labour is intimate, relational and involves managing the emotions of others as well as oneself. Partly due to its associations with emotional labour and conventional understandings and expressions of masculinity, care work is often described as a feminized practice. The archetypal space of care is the home. Globally, women perform vastly more care work in the home than men (ILO, 2018). This is the unpaid work that involves taking care of family members (and others) through activities such as cleaning, cooking and feeding, and other household activities. The role of women as primary domestic care workers was exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic (Cummins and Brannon, 2022). As M. Zhou et al (2020) point out, the impacts of lockdowns and related restrictions (for example, closure of schools and daycare provision) generally increased women’s responsibility and work in the home. Their research showed how mothers in the United Kingdom spent almost twice the number of hours on childcare than fathers during lockdown periods. Clearly there is a gender inequality associated with domestic care work. Another area of important research in this regard has focused on the experiences of female migrants. In recent decades, migrant women have become a central feature of globalization as the demand for domestic care work has grown (Meintel et al, 2006; England and Dyck, 2012). However, domestic care work is not restricted to women. For example, while the disparity with women still exists, research shows that men in the United States are spending more time with their children than in the past and moving (if slowly) in the direction of more egalitarian parenting responsibilities (Negraia et al, 2018). Further, in many parts of the world, children, particularly girls, spend significant amounts of time involved in unpaid care in the home (Rost, 2021).

Care work is not exclusively located in the home and the care industry makes up a significant proportion of national economies. This includes nurses or other healthcare professionals (Keogh and Gleeson, 2006), but also childcare workers, cleaners, those doing unpaid activist and/or community work (Conradson, 2003). Not unlike domestic care practices, research shows that when care work occurs in the context of wage-labour, it is often undervalued, underpaid and can be exploitative (Lawson, 2007; Cox, 2010; 2013; Green and Lawson, 2011; Pratt, 2012). Over the past several decades, feminist scholars have drawn attention to these injustices and inequalities and have worked hard to ensure care work – domestic and non-domestic – is recognized as legitimate labour practice and valued appropriately. This activism has served to recognize the crucial role of (predominantly female) carers for human lives.

Lawson (2007) examines the way care is devalued and marginalized. She suggests that this marginalization is not accidental, but rather, it is a purposeful, political act that allows the ‘myth’ of the ‘autonomous self-made man to go unchallenged’ (Lawson, 2007: 5). This myth helps to occlude those individuals and activities that facilitate successful and flourishing lives. Take, for example, the process of doing academic work (including writing a book!). Undeniably, the potential for any individual to thrive in academia relies on a robust and diverse community of care workers within and outside familial relations. A quick reflection on my personal circumstances is telling. When my son was younger, he was regularly looked after by non-family members in daycare and, later, in after-school club. At this very moment (as I write these words) he is in secondary school, being educated by teachers, and looked after by those employed in education. Of course, I have been to the GP regularly and supported through a community of care workers associated with the National Health Service. Closer to home, I receive emotional support from family members who encourage me to ‘keep going’ and a partner who co-parents, shares cooking and cleaning responsibilities, and provides care to me when I am unwell. The authorship of this book is in my name. Yet, the process of concealing care facilitates the myth that I am an autonomous individual, that my success is my own, that I am not ‘needy’ or vulnerable. As Lawson (2007: 5) argues, by concealing care we are less responsible to ‘share the fruits of our successes or to dedicate public resources to the work of care’. Yet, our involvement in the world is relational as we are constantly relying on and supporting others. As much we may wish to lay a singular claim to our achievements, these are embedded in collaborations and care practices. We are, in other words, always caught up in networks of care.

In my view, central to the myth that we are autonomous and self-made, is distaste for seeing ourselves as vulnerable and general negative connotations with this characteristic. While characteristics such as resilience, capability and toughness are commonly valued, being vulnerable is not generally seen as a positive attribute. Indeed, research has shown that many elderly care recipients reject the classifications of being dependent and vulnerable. Vulnerability, in such contexts, is commonly understood as a weakness and a failure to meet societal standards of self-care. This view can have devastating consequences for an individual’s sense of self-worth and wellbeing. When understood as lack and failure, it makes sense that we hide the care work associated with vulnerable bodies. As I noted in Chapter 1, there is resistance to the idea of categorizing people and communities as vulnerable. To be seen as vulnerable seems to indicate a lack of agency. Yet, Wiles (2011: 579) argues that vulnerability ‘could also be reconceptualised as openness, susceptibility and receptiveness’. Perhaps, Wiles argues, it would be better if we considered the extent to which ‘all persons are vulnerable’ (Wiles, 2011: 581). Rather than understanding vulnerability as a deficiency, resulting from some kind of unfortunate event or condition, what if it ‘describes the inherent and continuous susceptibility of corporeal life’ (Harrison, 2008: 427). I think this framing is critical to beginning to see how people and communities always require care. In other words, it is time to start recognizing that we are inherently vulnerable, fragile creatures. That systems of care are in place to allow me to work and support my family is a social and cultural accomplishment that should be celebrated. Yet, more often than not, the care work that makes life possible is either hidden or undervalued, particularly when compared with so-called rational and masculinized work (Tronto, 1993).

Without catastrophizing recent trends, it seems that care is devalued more than ever. Austerity measures and the associated reductions in welfare and social security benefits in the United Kingdom, for example, have disproportionately impacted women (Pearson, 2019). Moreover, the role of care work within the wider economy remains underappreciated and undervalued. However, there are signs of a shift, or at least another approach. Take, for example, US President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan. The investment strategy focuses on infrastructure and economic security for the country and signals a desire to ‘solidify the infrastructure of our care economy’ (The White House, 2021: np). Notably, Biden’s plan sees care and care work as part of the American national infrastructure and sought to position activities such as childcare and care for the elderly included within infrastructure funding programmes. As might be expected, defining care as infrastructure was met with a great deal of derision and critique (Tankersley and Smialek, 2021). Yet, some US states have taken these, or similar, measures forward. In New York, for example, the state senate recently developed proposals to enable free childcare for all low-income families (Ashford, 2022). These are initiatives that recognize the ecologies of care that make up flourishing lives. As many will be aware, understanding the role of childcare as critical and structural to society has been long recognized by Scandinavian countries where much more support for childcare is available (WE Forum, 2019b). It is exciting to see New York begin to move towards this progressive view of social infrastructure and wellbeing.

Landscapes of care

As a place-oriented scholar, I am naturally drawn to the spatial elements of social activities. Of course, there is a fascinating place element or spatiality to care. For example, geographers have been exploring the way certain spaces and sites support particular care practices and activities. The most obvious of these landscapes of care are the home, nurseries, hospitals, spas and health retreats. These are the places one might go in the case of an injury or illness or for a bit of mental or physical rejuvenation. Less traditional (or more ‘hidden’) sites that support care practices include cafes, parks and gardens, community centres, and even sporting clubs. For example, research now points to the mental health benefits people can experience though access to and participation in greenspaces. There are even programmes such as ‘wilderness therapy’ or ‘ecotherapy’ that bring people into contact with nature and animals to address significant emotional challenges and mental health illnesses (Barton and Rogerson, 2017; Fernee et al, 2019; Lord and Coffey, 2021).

Of course, no place is automatically a space of care. There is no universal or singular experience of any space. People experience places differently and these are always relational and contextual. The home, for example, can be both a space of love and nourishment as well as one of violence and abuse where care is sadly absent. However, our understanding of care is enriched by exploring how it occurs in particular places. Human activities are always spatial – if we are sitting at a computer, on a train, or in hospital – the experiences we have are framed by our situatedness in some place. That care takes place in any space is a relational, co-produced activity that must be cultivated and nourished. In other words, care is a place-based political undertaking. I stress the word political to emphasize the purposefulness to care and the consequent implications for those who benefit and those who do not. The politics of care signals an orientation towards inequalities (Askins and Blazek, 2017) and an ethical framing of what matters. Of course, I am particularly interested in the role of water, and the concomitant spaces of water, that support care practices. There is a great history of water care – the way being near or in water provides both physical and emotional benefits (Strang, 2015). Not far from my home is the city of Bath. It is a World Heritage Site famous for its thermal baths, developed by the Romans and reinvented in the 18th century as Georgians became more interested in the healing and restorative properties of mineral water. Human life is often enriched through connections with water and watery environments.

Unfortunately, there are many potential disadvantages associated with living near water which might include, most obviously, the potential for floods and disease such as cholera. However, research shows that there are also many potential benefits from forging close connections to ‘blue space’. The concept of blue space builds on work that explored the health and wellbeing impacts of being in or near parks and other forms of green space. Blue space might refer to something as vast as an ocean or even a small neighbourhood pond or stream (Volker et al, 2016). Research shows that people can benefit significantly from interactions and engagements with these kinds of resources. For example, Brereton et al (2008) found that people who lived close to the Irish coast were more satisfied with their lives than those who lived further inland. Studies suggest that the benefits of living near the coast might also lead to higher levels of both mental and physical health (White et al, 2020).

Yet, what I have found particularly interesting about blue space is the relationship with care and how specific spaces can be organized or constructed to facilitate caring experiences and practices. In earlier research (Buser et al, 2020b), my colleagues and I explored and detailed how activists and socially engaged artists used water and watery spaces to connect with people. In our research, we worked with three organizations (Canal Connections; My Future My Choice; Active Energy) involved in water-social activism. Canal Connections is run by a former police officer who sets up canal boat trips for socially isolated, disadvantaged youth in the city of Leeds. My Future My Choice takes children on trips and visits to Bristol’s harbourside and sets up boat-building workshops and other activities intended to inspire, build confidence and bring attention to the city’s water history. Active Energy draws on the enthusiasm of older people in East London to explore water-based energy opportunities. The project we studied involved building a stream wheel that oxygenated the Bow Creek, improving the watercourse and fish habitats.

What the activists told us was that water was a means to start a conversation. This conversation was intended to be both literal and metaphorical. It is, of course, a conversation between people. But it is also between people and their surroundings. For example, for someone who has never been on a boat, the experience of driving a longboat through the canals of Leeds opens new connections and lines of communication. Such experiences allow water (and associated environments, both built and natural) to speak. They expose the interdependencies which surround us and draw our attention to the potential of corresponding with the world in new ways. To me, this notion of correspondence is very helpful for understanding care. We are not in isolation from the world, but always in some kind of correspondence. Landscapes of care, in my relational framing, are a means to understand the spatiality or placeness of that correspondence.

Care and proximity

So far, I have been discussing the experiences of care that happen more or less in proximity. That is, people giving or receiving care at home, a park, or some other site in face-to-face fashion. The activity is thus one in which a person can directly engage with the care giver. However, alongside these conceptual developments, over the last couple of decades scholars have pushed theories of care and care work to consider activities and practices that are not spatially proximate. As noted by Paula England (2005: 387), the benefits of ‘localized’ care can travel. For example, passing along healthy lifestyles and habits or providing individual education goes further than an individual care recipient. As she notes, these ‘indirect benefits of care’ operate as a ‘public good’ producing benefits to people (and things) well beyond the original direct recipients of care (England, 2005: 382). Meanwhile, others have explored the various articulations of care in terms of non-proximate forms of caring (Cox, 2010: 113; Morgan, 2010; Atkinson et al, 2011). For Cox (2010), the potential for care at a distance is particularly evident in the area of food justice. Cox points to the way fair trade, ethical consumption and alternative food schemes can be foundations of connection to distant others (for example, farmers and communities in the global south, the environment) as well as sources of emotional fulfilment and joy. Such an approach helpfully moves care away from the purely domestic setting and ‘beyond parochial self-interest’ (Cox, 2010: 117). The distanced notion of care does not necessarily mean a disconnect or a diminished version of care. In fact, distance can actually magnify the importance of caring activities. Consider, for example, the way Greta Thunberg sparked worldwide climate change protests among students and young people. The activism she sparked brought a new generation of people into the fold of climate justice and planetary health and wellbeing, broadening human care for the planet and those negatively impacted by environmental change. Of course, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a great deal of care work was provided virtually. In my own case, advancements in video-conferencing and internet infrastructure meant I was able to stay in contact with family members who live thousands of miles away. Interestingly, we have maintained many of the communication habits we formed during these times and stay in touch better now than we did any time in the past several decades.

By looking at these non-localized forms of care we can enrich our understanding of the concept and how it may be put into practice in the context of entrenched global challenges. I suggest that a broad understanding of how care works or can work at a distance is critically important for beginning to address issues and challenges – like global warming or water insecurity – that are so massive that they belie easy explanation or any type of quick fix. That any care activity might not be face-to-face or in direct proximity does not eliminate the fundamental component of care. Moreover, this global, non-proximate framing of care could be seen as a means to counter recent inward-looking trends (for example, protectionism, some forms of nationalism) and move towards a type of care cosmopolitanism or global ‘ecological citizenship’ (Roe and Buser, 2016).

Caring with and for things

Care and care work is not only about looking after people but can also involve the practice of looking after things (for example, antiques or machinery) and non-humans (for example, pets and animals). Think, for a moment, about your city or town. How does it all hold together? While you may be more aware of the potholes, graffiti, sites of disinvestment or decline, there is likely an incredibly active programme of maintenance and repair that keeps all of it running. Human settlements always require care. Here, I start to expand what we might conventionally consider to be care and care work. I want to explore care as an ecology that is not restricted purely to humans. There has been some fascinating research that explores the ways in which care emerges in urban settings. For example, Kim Kullman’s (2014) research centres on the pavements of Helsinki and the way children take part in caring activities. Kullman shows how children look after each other when walking to school (and other journeys) and how young people develop an attunement to the city through mundane activities like biking, collecting recycling or petting a dog. These everyday experiences bring children into contact with the city and help develop a relational understanding of people and their environs. People, in other words, are not separate from the city. But, rather, they develop an understanding and even an ethics of care through interactions with the materiality of the city. What I found particularly insightful from Kullman’s paper was her expression of ‘vulnerable urbanism’ (Kullman, 2014: 2876). She notes how vulnerability is not a weakness but a universal condition (particularly among children, which we mostly seem to accept) that signals the need to participate in urban life. By participating (carefully) in urban life, children can begin cultivating points of connection with the city and finding their way towards young adulthood. Vulnerable urbanism, as such, is not eliminated by keeping children in the home. Rather, if vulnerability is recognized as becoming part of the city, children must be supported to explore the city and participate in ‘safe’ urban interactions. A bit of risk, it seems, allows children to see themselves as fragile but also as active agents in how this fragility can be managed.

While Kullman’s research shows how a sense of care emerges among children through mundane and playful interactions in the city, other research shows how the city itself is cared for. Often, this work is conducted by individuals employed by a city, town or local authority. For example, Denis and Pontille (2015) examine the practices associated with maintaining the signage within the Paris metro. During their fieldwork, they shadowed a maintenance team that looked after the signs that help people move around the system. This work of looking carefully at the materiality of society provides yet another way to explore fragility and vulnerability. ‘Fragility’, they argue, ‘is a mode of existence of matter that must be considered if material ordering processes are to be documented in their full complexity’ (Denis and Pontille, 2015: 341). In other words, the things we interact with on a daily basis – that help us get around in the world – are in constant states of deterioration and decline. Their ability to perform intended functions (for example, to support wayfinding) relies on process of maintenance and care which help overcome a condition of vulnerability and fragility. Similarly, Ureta (2016) studied the care practices associated with the management of waste from a Chilean copper mine. One of the key insights of this work was identifying the ways in which care was entangled in the activities of waste management personnel. In one example, Ureta discusses how two workers provided regular, meticulous surveying and maintenance to project infrastructure (including a bridge essential for transporting waste materials). Drawing on Annemarie Mol’s scholarship (2008), Ureta (2016: 1541) describes this ‘tinkering’ as a care practice as it reflected the workers’ unique ways of engaging with the bridge’s decaying components – a type of ‘bodily commitment’ and engagement that is experimental and reflective. The word tinkering reminds me of a creative (if somewhat humbling) television show on BBC One called The Repair Shop hosted by restoration expert Jay Blades. In each episode, people bring loved items and heirlooms that have fallen into disrepair to the shop. A team of experts then work over several weeks to restore the broken bicycles, watches, cabinets, ceramics, guitars, and so on. On one level, The Repair Shop highlights quite clearly how maintenance, repair and restoration practices are entangled with material care. It also demonstrates how people can become so strongly attached to objects. Indeed, this attachment produces something like a commitment or obligation to restore among the show’s participants who bring in the items. They often state ‘I needed to fix this’ while there is generally no practical justification to repair any of these individual items or heirlooms. Rather, it is an emotional need based on an affective attachment to the thing and what (and often who) it represents.

Of course, many things in the world have a very practical and important role to play and must be regularly maintained, repaired and eventually replaced. Water infrastructure is one such thing. Indeed, in my own research (Buser and Boyer, 2021), I found a rich set of care practices and approaches among water engineers involved in maintaining the city of Bristol’s water supply. During this research I spent some time shadowing an inspector named Sam who expressed attachment and love for the city’s underground pipes and machinery. Sam was employed by the water company and, as such, was of course obligated to ensure the system was properly maintained. However, his engagement with water infrastructure was much deeper than a purely instrumental relationship that might be expected from an employee. Indeed, I remember him telling me that he felt these pipes should be treated as heirlooms (not unlike the heirlooms brought to The Repair Shop!). Sam expressed a great deal of enjoyment and satisfaction in his work and referred to himself as a ‘gold-plated engineer’. With this somewhat satirical point, Sam suggested that he would go far beyond the conventional expectations of any inspection job. While he gave a high level of care to the city’s water infrastructure, he often told me about the felt, emotional attachment and sense of value he got out of his work, far beyond the pragmatic programme of ensuring a safe and reliable water supply.

In these examples, care is shown to cut across human and non-human boundaries. We are richly entangled in an ecology of things and people such as Sam and Jay Blades provide care and care work to all kinds of non-human things. Of course, all infrastructure requires care through regular maintenance and repair. Vulnerability and fragility are the normal conditions of things and, as with human bodies, not an abnormality. Rather, this inherent vulnerability encourages us to recognize that urban care is always needed.

Things that do care work

Most people will agree that humans care about and take care of things. That these activities might be seen to be care work, as I argued earlier, is a more radical conception. Now, I want to take this a step further. So far, the discussion of care has focused primarily on the actions of people – either looking after loved ones, signs, heirlooms, the planet, or various objects and things. In this section, I look more specifically at the role of non-humans as agents of care.

Not too long ago, I came across the War Childhood Museum. The museum includes donated items that reflected children’s experiences of war, such as books, toys, drawings, and all kinds of mundane and everyday things. The museum is based on the idea that our childhood memories are strongly linked to particular objects. When reading about the museum, the object that caught my eye and really moved me was a teddy bear. The object was given to a child who had lost two fingers in a grenade explosion during the Bosnian War. In the exhibition, the injured child gives an account of the role the teddy bear played in uncertain times. On the museum’s website, he says ‘Whenever I would hear shootings, I would curl up to the wall next to my bed and hug this teddy bear. As long as I slept with it, I felt that everything was going to be okay’ (War Childhood Museum, 2023). The museum provides an account of the trauma associated with war and conflict and gives a voice to children’s experiences. It is an impressive platform for understanding and peacebuilding. Yet, I could not shake the idea of this teddy bear and the role it played in that child’s life. I can imagine that donating it to the museum was affirming (recognizing the individual experience) and probably simultaneously heartbreaking. Indeed, other stories from children who have now grown express the way these objects continue to play a role in the way they manage trauma. The museum and the experience of this teddy bear highlight a very simple and obvious point, but one that is not always stated in this way – objects can give people care. They can make us feel better.

Undeniably, these objects provided solace, comfort and security to children who experienced trauma. Yet, how do we understand these contributions through the lens of care? Some scholars have focused on the way things give care without even knowing (or being able to know) that they are doing it. Maria Puig de la Bellacasa (2011), for example, explores the role of soil in maintaining ecosystems and shows how humans are not alone in looking after the Earth. Rather, she notes, ‘we are in relations of mutual care’ along with worms and other organic and inorganic material (de la Bellacasa, 2017: 161). Understanding the interdependencies associated with (soil) care in this way suggests that we need to be open to the ways things other than humans make life possible. Moreover, this kind of perspective helps to see how care is always situated in material, more-than-human contexts.

This approach sees non-humans and matter as vibrant with agentic power (Bennett, 2010; Coole and Frost, 2010). Drawing on this post-humanist framing (Braidotti, 2001; 2013), in this book, I attend to the role of the more-than-human within relations of care and seek to extend understanding of who (and what) can participate in care relations. Through attunement to the non-human within networks of urban water infrastructure, I argue that non-human things play an important, active role within assemblages of urban infrastructure maintenance and repair.

Of course, within the context of infrastructure, few would deny the essential role of non-humans. The supply and delivery of clean water to cities and towns relies on pipes, pumps, reservoirs and all kinds of machinery. If you are ever in London, you can see a lot of this kind of infrastructure at the London Museum of Water and Steam. The museum displays a range of artefacts, including gigantic pumps, that have been used over almost 200 years to provide the city’s residents with water. The accomplishment of clean water, flowing out of London’s taps, is a feat of Victorian engineering that is achieved through collaboration with things. During the 20th century, water infrastructure was often associated with progress and modernism. As such, dams, hydroelectric projects, canals and water networks, and other mega-works were often celebrated. Recall William Mulholland’s opening of the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913: “Take it, there it is,” he proclaimed to throngs of thirsty onlookers. Yet, today, at least in most of the places where I have lived, we do not seem to celebrate public works in much the same way. Further, while we can visit these historic objects in a museum, very little of our water infrastructure is visible. Indeed, in the global north, water infrastructure is not something people generally recognize in their daily experience. Most do not think about the water distribution network unless it breaks down or is disrupted. Infrastructures are designed to be out of sight – their success is often measured by invisibility – the more successful and effective it is, the less people are aware of it. As Edwards (2017) points out, there is a tendency to hide infrastructure. It does not matter if this is water supply, electricity, sewers or even home wiring and plumbing – we tend to put it behind walls, underground, or conceal it in some way. When working properly, the use of this infrastructure becomes normalized and taken for granted. This is sometimes referred to as being ‘black boxed’ – a concept that comes from Bruno Latour and Science and Technology Studies – meaning the way the inner workings of systems become invisible due to their success. The more efficient and effective infrastructure systems become, the more difficult it becomes to understand how they work.

According to this theory, infrastructure becomes noticeable when it fails. As Susan Leigh Star (1999: 382) highlighted, ‘when it breaks: the server is down, the bridge washes out, there is a power blackout’ – this is when we become aware of how important these unseen bits of the city can be. Steve Graham and Simon Marvin (2002) developed this idea further in their book Splintering Urbanism. According to Graham and Marvin, we are living in a time where infrastructures – rather than unifying places – are setting places apart. This happens through processes of deregulation, privatization and the apparent fragmentation of public services through diverse neoliberal initiatives. Indeed, in the United States and United Kingdom, long gone (or vastly displaced and marginalized) are the publicly run communications companies, television stations and transport systems. In their place is a new regime of choice and individualization delivered through a seemingly limitless collection of packages or bundles of services to meet any need, preference or consumer quirk. Conceptualized as splintered, infrastructure is thus a means to deliver inequality through the mundane activities of life. That this inequality is largely hidden – literally right in front of our noses – through water, communications, transport and other forms of infrastructure makes the project of understanding infrastructure that much more critical.

In many parts of the world, however, infrastructure is plainly visible. In Mumbai, India, for example, many have written about the daily, time-consuming and arduous efforts to access clean water. In the Mumbai settlement of Dharavi, one of the largest, most dense informal settlements in the world, water infrastructure is literally at one’s feet. Informally laid pipes course through walkways and alongside buildings, bringing water – intermittently – to parts of the city where public service is not provided. In these conditions, water is only available for a short period of the day – sometimes only an hour – and must be pumped to and collected at shared taps and access points. In Dharavi, water infrastructure is always present and never taken for granted. Even in the wealthy parts of Mumbai, water infrastructure is plainly evident, as without 24-hour service, all residents must ensure water is pumped and stored in tanks for use during the day and night.

By paying attention to water infrastructure in this way, one starts to see the role things play in the production of healthy (or non-healthy) lives. Clean water for billions of people is a human accomplishment that is realized through collaboration with vibrant matter (Bennett, 2010). My framing through this book seeks to draw attention to this accomplishment and recognize those bits of materiality that are so central to flourishing lives.

Water work as care work

In the previous section, I suggested that objects, things and infrastructures such as pipes, pumps and reservoirs are caught up in the care assemblages that provide clear water and enable healthy lives. I want to return, for a moment, to the people involved in these networks and the relationship between those managing water systems and the people who benefit.

In my research on water infrastructure in Bristol, I wanted to see the mundane. I wanted to see how an efficient and functioning water system worked and how it was delivered to people in the city. As might be expected, it took significant effort, approvals and risk assessment form-filling to be allowed to explore parts of Bristol’s water infrastructure. And even then, I was restricted to certain areas and activities. I wanted to see where my water came from, the routes it took, how it was managed, who and what cared for it, and what enabled it to get to my house. I wanted to know how my daily life was made possible through water management systems in Bristol. I found, somewhat unsurprisingly, that water suppliers in the area wanted to be known and recognized for providing a public good (that is, clean water). I saw outreach programmes and policies that sought to encourage their ‘customers’ to forge a relationship with them and water through particular pro-environmental behaviours such as installing low flow taps, reducing lawn watering, or limiting use of pesticides. Yet, for largely understandable safety and security reasons, they were simultaneously hesitant to make these connections (and water systems) visible. Indeed, there are very limited opportunities for people to engage with water infrastructure in Bristol. For example, reservoirs are off-limits, pipes and tunnels are securely hidden underground, and maintenance access points are unmarked, nondescript and securitized. However, I suggest that this kind of securitization and invisibility is incompatible and ill-suited to helping people forge a close relationship with water. It creates fragmentation and isolation, distancing people from the environment and the infrastructure that makes healthy lives possible. Most of us have probably seen the efforts in schools and other settings to make the links between the food on someone’s plate to farms, farmers and agriculture more evident. Or programmes that map the lifecycles of things we buy from resource extraction to production, and on through recycling or landfill. But rarely do we see where our water comes from or where it goes after we use it.

Part of the problem, I argue, is that while the delivery of water is understood as a public good that is essential to life, this work is not expressed as care. The workers I met in Bristol were invested – some enthusiastically so – in ensuring people can drink clean water and flush away sewage without the risk of disease or sickness. They conduct inspections, provide regular maintenance, and repair faults and leaks – they literally look after the infrastructural systems that make life in Bristol possible. On one infrastructure job I witnessed, a team was working on a sewage repair underneath a road in Clifton, a leafy Bristol neighbourhood not far from where I live. During the job, one of the team in the underground space felt some warm water flowing out of a pipe into the wastewater system where they were working. As the water splashed against his boots he commented, somewhat jokingly, “Someone’s having a nice warm bath.” It was a flippant comment, but at the same time, it highlighted an amazingly intimate moment. Here, the care giver and care receiver do not come into physical contact except through the flows of shared bath water. It is a disconnected experience of care, but an important one nonetheless.

The vulnerability and fragility of individual human lives – those people always in need of water – is rarely, if ever, acknowledged. I suggest that such disavowal of the vulnerability of people and their constant need for care reflects a neoliberal framing of water as a product and a service, rather than an essential component for life. Everyone has a need and a right to clean water. That it arrives at my house and flows out of my taps is an achievement that allows me and my family to be healthy and active. In this way, should we not recognize the people, things and institutions that provide clean water to the residents of Bristol as part of a care assemblage? This is, in my way of thinking, the ecology of water-care that enables flourishing life in the city.

Care assemblages

The foundation for my thinking about care is situated in the concept of ‘assemblage’, a theory generally attributed to the philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1987). On the one hand, the concept of assemblage brings to mind the relatively easy-to-understand, commonplace notion of a simple collection or grouping. Yet, the framing set out by Deleuze and Guattari provides a great deal more depth in terms of exploring how such collections come together, what holds them in place, and what might burst them apart. Indeed, academic scholarship has drawn on ‘assemblage thinking’ to explore a range of themes and topics ranging from the quality of public spaces (Buser, 2018) to parkour (Mould, 2009) and just about everything in-between. While there is no singular definition of assemblage in the academic lexicon, a few key themes are identifiable that set out the overarching way of thinking. Most centrally here is an understanding of assemblages as heterogeneous or mixed collections that are always in process (never static) and made up of diverse parts that are more-than-human. I will quickly review these general framing concepts before looking at how the concept can be applied in the context of water security.

First, an assemblage is not a universal or singular whole but, rather, an expression of the coming together of heterogeneous parts. This heterogeneity signals that there is nothing inherent about an assemblage, but rather, it is a relational concept that draws on the individual elements that come together. Yet, by coming together, there is always something more, a type of emergence that forms a type of ‘relational collective’ (Sultan and Duff, 2022: 3). An assemblage, in other words, is more than the sum of its parts. Second, assemblages are never complete or fixed. Assemblages may seem stable. However, they are contingent, always under construction and deconstruction. Deleuze refers to these processes as territorializations and deterritorializations. These are the systems and routes of coordination and fragmentation that push and pull any set of relations. Language is a great example of this as there are formal rules (territorializations) that structure and constrain. Yet, these are always temporary, pushed and pulled apart by informalities, dialects and other linguistic quirks (deterritorializations) that shift how we understand and use language. This constant shifting is also sometimes described as a ‘becoming’. Third, agency, within an assemblage frame, is distributed across social and material entities. Agency, in other words, is more-than-human in that it decentres the human subject and allows action to emerge across all kinds of entities. There is a ‘thingness’ to assemblages that suggests human action is entangled in relations with both material and immaterial components.

In my community-oriented work, I have found these concepts incredibly useful to understand how people come together to work on particular challenges. For example, after completing my PhD, I spent quite a bit of time studying the use and regeneration efforts of activities working in a Bristol public space called ‘the bearpit’ (Buser, 2017; 2018). What I found was that experiences and understandings of ‘publicness’ in the bearpit was constantly shifting, being reterritorialized and territorialized along with flows of investment, crime, activism, weather, seasons, time of day (or night) and so on. One interviewee once described the bearpit as no-man’s land – a battlefield front line between the forces of capitalism (the shopping mall) and resistance (the neighbourhood of Stokes Croft). This flux (both daily and over the span of many years) reflects the plasticity of assemblage and its ability to shift or be moulded by component parts.

There has also been interesting use of assemblage thinking to understand the concept and experience of vulnerability. For example, Sultan and Duff (2022) argue that vulnerability is not a fixed property or characteristic, but rather is an assemblage, constructed by component parts in relation. While vulnerability is central to human existence, it nevertheless exists in association to and with context. This perspective challenges the idea of vulnerability as a flaw or weakness, as I argued earlier. Rather, an assemblage approach to vulnerability sees it as a becoming that may or may not support particular outcomes (whether beneficial or otherwise).

When looking at issues of resilience or water security, thinking through assemblages helps identify the complex relations, interactions and interdependencies, as well as inequalities. Moreover, while an assemblage approach sees agency as distributed, this does not mean that all things are equal, or all component parts of an assemblage equally determine or influence particular outcomes. The importance of particular components can be understood as ‘bright objects’ – these are the parts of any assemblage that produce high levels of gravity or control. Other parts (whether they be people, things or ideas) gravitate towards them, circling into their orbit, and becoming part of the larger whole. In a traditional family relationship, a mother and father can be seen as bright objects for a young child. Interestingly, over time, the relations and interdependencies of the family assemblage generally shift and deterritorialize. At this point of my life, it certainly feels that my teenage son is the bright object, holding me within his orbit and structuring my familial engagement. At some point in the future (not too soon I hope), my son will likely move out and begin to make his own way in the world. My ability to keep him within my control or orbit with thus be further reduced.

Within the context of this book, assemblage thinking can help to see the way things such as people, weather, infrastructure, fragility and care come together to inform water security. It can help to see the bright objects that structure lives and centre our orbits. The experience of providing clean water for London’s Victorian-era residents is an excellent example of how a care assemblage works in relation to water security. The story revolves around Jon Snow, who is well known for his work researching and identifying the source of London’s deadly cholera outbreaks. Snow was an English physician who had witnessed, studied and treated cholera throughout his life. Cholera is a potentially deadly disease that is commonly transmitted in food and water that is contaminated by human faeces. However, in the mid-1850s, common thinking was that it was transmitted by rotting organic matter in the air. A series of outbreaks in London resulted in thousands of deaths with some 600 people dying during one week in 1854 (Tulchinsky, 2018). Snow investigated an outbreak located in Soho and, after extensive fieldwork and mapping, found that most of the dead lived close to the Broad Street drinking water pump. He also found evidence that the pump had been contaminated with human faeces (Daniel and Markoff, nd). Once he convinced authorities to close the pump, the cholera outbreak ended.

Jon Snow’s work in London is an example of how assemblage thinking can help identify the complexities around water security, including the presence (or lack) of care elements. London’s Victorian cholera assemblage, which would include water, pumps, faeces, maps, health knowledge and ideas about health, and disease, was territorialized around the idea that bad air produced ill-health. This idea held such sway, as a bright object, that it limited the ability to find solutions. It took a line of flight, or deterritorialization away from dogma (through the creativity and perseverance of Jon Snow) to bring new ideas and thinking. I like to think of these parts of the assemblage as machines. They work away, spinning and churning, reinforcing ways of life, culture and practice. It is difficult to force a machine to deviate from its intended purpose. So many machines churn away and plod along. Sometimes, it is necessary to unplug them and build new machines.

When I look at London’s cholera story, I can see how Jon Snow used an assemblage approach without calling it so. Snow carefully and systematically explored and mapped the component parts that made up a collective (those suffering from cholera outbreaks), including their routes, built form and the urban materiality they interacted with. He found the dominant way of thinking about cholera (as a disease of the air) was not leading to a solution, rather, it was constraining and did not account for the way the disease spread. The eventual end result, the achievement of a clean and healthy water supply in London, was only possible through a deterritorialization of commonplace understandings of health and disease. I like to frame this kind of thinking as the construction of an assemblage of care where healthy, flourishing lives are enabled. Seeing water security as a care assemblage signals the importance of bright objects that dominate discourse and ways of working. Today, in the United Kingdom, water security is not understood within the frame of care, but rather, as one of commodity. I suggest that a reframing to assemblage perspectives might enable one to uncover the multiplicity of agents or actors that inform water security and flourishing lives.

Ecologies of care: an introduction

So far in this chapter I have set out some of the prevailing and innovative theories related to care. I have shown how an assemblage approach draws attention to the multiplicity of components (or machines) involved in any care practice. In this framing, the delivery of care is rarely an exclusive human-to-human exchange. While care between people may be the leading understanding of how care works, the discussion so far demonstrates how there are other ways of experiencing and constructing care. In these ways, direct person-to-person contact may not be present. Indeed, emotions are not always involved. Further, there may be a distance between care giving and receiving and the care assemblage will likely include a range of things that facilitate any care-giving act. I refer to this as a distributed framing of care which sees care as the coming together of rich machinic assemblages. Care, in this way, is relational. It works through and with connections between machines that churn away (often out of sight) in their own way. But when they come together, when they are made visible, when we put emphasis on these little caring machines, we can see something richer – a thickness of care.

One may ask, does such a distributed understanding of care mean that care work can be found almost anywhere? Does this theory of care (with an important role for teddy bears and pipes) diminish the central feminist project and critique of patriarchal societies? As noted earlier, feminists have argued that care work is often gendered. In this, the work of care is typically done by women whose work is thus undervalued, underpaid or unpaid. Feminists have rallied to the cause of recognizing how care work is unfairly organized and have made significant (although incomplete) strides in recognizing the structural and daily inequalities that course through care work. This may be working to address the low pay and job security for the millions of cleaners and domestic workers that look after homes. Or, it may be challenging the conventional role of women as the primary care giver in the home. I am a feminist who seeks equality and justice in these areas. My intent is not to diminish these experiences or to devalue these important agendas. Yes, almost all of what is commonly recognized as care work is gendered and unequal. The care economy is framed by this emotional connection to what is often described as feminized, emotional and intimate labour. These are real inequalities based on gender.

Yet, what happens if we see the richness of care in other aspects of life? What if care really is everywhere, but it has been hidden? In my work and in this book, what I would like to do is identify how care works in some of these contexts where it is hidden and reframed, for example, as infrastructure or commodity. The broad argument I make in this book is that care has been removed from many aspects of daily life exactly because it is so undervalued and laden with assumptions about gender. If care is an ethical responsibility, that operates outside modern rationality or consumption models of behaviour, I can understand why it can be threatening. It means that if we were to recognize our responsibility for flourishing, healthy lives, it would be difficult to justify the commodification of infrastructure and water resources. I am convinced that the privatized water companies here in the United Kingdom where I live avoid language around care for exactly this reason. In media accounts, for example, water security work is often rationalized as a masculinist, neoliberal programme of engineering that serves customers. For many, to care is to recognize an emotional connection which can be at odds with neoliberalism. If care is an ethical relationship, it challenges modern and rational ideas around systems of infrastructure. What interests me here is exposing the care that is present within these systems. I want to poke holes in masculinized framings of infrastructure and water security.

One way to do this is through ecological citizenship, a concept that has been put forward as a means to draw attention to our global responsibility that challenges conventional framings of human–environment relations (Dobson, 2007). Conventionally, citizenship has been associated with state-based rights, such as the rights connected to being British or American. Yet, as the idea connects to particular bounded territories (for example, a nation), it struggles to encapsulate most globally significant environmental challenges. Dobson’s ecological citizenship moves away from national boundaries as a frame for citizenship. In its place is our universal condition of living on Earth. Further, his ideas draw out our moral and ethical responsibility to address an injustice (for example, climate change). Countering market-oriented and neoliberal framing of pro-environmental behaviours – such as the consumerist language around water management – ecological citizenship calls upon our sense of justice as the key motivating trait. A further point of interest here is that ecological citizenship explodes the distinctions between public/private and sees what we do in the home as part of our citizenship due to the impacts of these private acts in the public realm.

In this book, I draw inspiration from Dobson’s writing about human–nature relations and see this way of moving beyond individual self-interest as central to the project of supporting water security. Further, I suggest that the blurring between public and private spheres is particularly helpful as it helps to recognize how private behaviours influence wider publics. Yet, more significantly for me, such blurring destabilizes what we might understand as a public act, which is conventionally positioned as a rational, masculine space, in contrast to the domesticity of the private. Expanding this, an ecologies of care positionality seeks to bring to light those aspects of care that are unseen or hidden in plain sight – in the public sphere.

Joan Tronto wrote that care is ‘everything that we do to maintain, continue and repair our world so that we can live in it as well as possible … that world includes our bodies, ourselves and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web’ (1993: 103). This powerful statement identifies how care is present across a diversity of engagements with the world – from the everyday to the monumental. It signals that care is interdependent, and a condition of our existence. All too often, these interdependencies are occluded. All too often, particularly in the global north, we fail to recognize (or purposefully deny) our fragility and embeddedness in networks of care (Alum and Houston, 2020). Yet, all people need care. An ecological framing of care draws attention to the pervasiveness of care and works to make these practices visible. Later in the book, I will highlight other ways of seeing human fragility and how people are caught up in wider ecologies. Inspiration for some of this comes from non-western worldviews such as sumak kawsay (an Andean philosophy) which centre on human–nature interdependencies and (commonly) non-individualist ways of being.