Introduction

Practice Institutions as rules cannot be observed, they are abstract, however, their effect on water users manifests in what water users do, which is observable. This presents the challenge of how to investigate institutions in water resources management. To solve that problem, the study analyses practices. Practice is ‘routinized’ type of behaviour which consists of several elements, interconnected to one another: forms of bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states of emotion and motivational knowledge,’ (Reckwitz (2002:249). A practice is social since it is a type of behaving and understanding that appears at different locales and at different points of time (ibid). The concept is useful for, among other things, analysing how actions of people are related to material objects (Van der Zaag, 1992). In this thesis the concept of practice will be used to analyse how water resources are managed at the local level. Moreover, aspects such as catchment planning can be traced in terms of how they are made through observing practices of catchment councils. Therefore practice in this thesis will not be limited to actors with agency (human beings) but will also apply to institutional arrangements which can be

considered to get and express their agency through actors working in them. A point to note that water is used and managed at different spatial scales which necessitates that the concept of scale be analysed.