As editors Charlotte Bates and Kate Moles promise, Living with Water: Everyday Encounters and Liquid Connections moves like the element it studies – fluid yet forceful, gentle yet transformative and connecting different streams of thought just as a river connects its tributaries. The collection brings together currents of sociology, anthropology, environmental studies and artistic practice and, like its subject, refuses to be contained within a single form. It flows through academic analysis, artistic intervention and personal narrative to reveal how water simultaneously shapes our physical environment, social relations, cultural practices and ways of thinking.
From its opening reflections, the stories unfold across three thematic sections – “Float,” “Flow” and “Submerge” – each exploring a distinct way of being with water: from skimming its surface to following its movements and, finally, surrendering to its depths. These carefully structured divisions create a natural progression that mirrors humans’ evolving relationship with water – from observer to participant to fellow inhabitant of the liquid world.
The collection reveals how water simultaneously shapes our physical environment, social relations, cultural practices and ways of thinking.
In Float, we encounter the rich diversity of lives lived on and around water through a series of vivid case studies. Intimate portraits – such as teenage fishers seeking solace by the reservoir, ferry passengers traversing ancient waterways, and canal boat dwellers navigating London’s liquid streets – illuminate how water actively shapes ways of life. It is not merely a backdrop for human activity but a vital participant in the choreography of everyday life, creating unique social spaces while revealing the deeper connections between human adaptation and aquatic environments that have evolved over generations.
Flow shifts to a broader perspective, confronting us with water’s capacity to escape human control and challenge existing systems of knowledge in profound and unexpected ways. Through diverse cases – from Calgary’s leak detectors listening intently for underground whispers to Indigenous communities resisting tidal energy development in the Bay of Fundy – authors reveal how water disrupts our attempts to control and understand it. Water is a material and political force, challenging colonial approaches to resource management while demonstrating how environmental change forces us to rethink our fundamental relationship with its uncontainable nature.
Lastly, Submerge invites a deeper immersion. Through intimate encounters – wild swimmers braving Dublin’s turbulent Liffey, poetic wanderings along the meandering River Churn and meditations on swimming without water beneath antipodean trees – we see the transformative power of complete immersion. It is a force that dissolves the boundaries between body and environment, revealing how deep engagement with water can reshape our understanding of both ourselves and the liquid world we collectively inhabit and share.
The edited collection’s organisational fluidity extends to its methodological approach. Contributors navigate their subject through varied channels where academic analysis naturally merges with personal narrative, ethnographic observation interweaves with artistic creation and theoretical reflection blends with embodied experience. These diverse approaches converge to create a rich synthesis of understanding that transcends conventional academic boundaries. The interweaving of different genres and methods demonstrates how form and content can work together to deepen our understanding of living with water.
Like rivers finding paths to the sea, diverse methods converge toward coherent theoretical perspectives. Gender emerges as a central current, flowing from Victorian public baths as working-class women’s social spaces to contemporary accounts of female empowerment through wild swimming. These gendered narratives illuminate how liquid spaces have continually shaped and challenged gender dynamics. The collection’s emphasis on sensory and embodied experiences further dissolves the human-water boundary, revealing complex entanglements of bodies and water and challenging traditional notions of separate human and natural domains.
The interweaving of different genres and methods demonstrates how form and content can work together to deepen our understanding of living with water.
Despite its considerable achievements, the collection does encounter some limitations in its course. While Bates and Moles aspire to chart global waters, the authors’ case studies remain largely anchored in the Anglophone world, particularly Britain, thereby leaving many opportunities unexplored. In a similar vein, the contributors’ engagement with increasingly critical technologically mediated water systems in urban settings is relatively shallow. These limitations in scope are further complicated by structural issues: while the three main sections create distinct pools of knowledge, the connections between individual chapters sometimes lack clear convergence, requiring readers to bridge these gaps themselves.
Overall, Living with Water: Everyday Encounters and Liquid Connections succeeds in establishing water as an active force that co-evolves with individuals, communities and societies. Through methodological innovation and theoretical sophistication, the contributors open new channels for understanding human-water relations. At a time of mounting environmental and political challenges, they collectively demand more than technical solutions by insisting that we recognise water’s agency and our interconnection with it. For scholars across environmental humanities and more-than-human sociology, as well as anyone seeking to understand their daily liquid encounters, editors Charlotte Bates and Kate Moles offer vital insights for reimagining our relationship with water.