ABSTRACT
Water has been at the centre of the international development agenda for decades. Yet, stark water inequalities persist across regions, rural–urban populations, intra-urban spaces, income groups and multiple identities. Because of the fundamental nature of water, socio-spatial inequalities in access have cascading effects on health, well-being, and gender inequalities. Understanding the processes generating uneven access to water is, therefore, essential. This chapter draws on critical water studies to think through the production and politics of water inequalities. To this aim, it examines multiple articulations of power producing water inequalities, including the mutual constitution of power, money, and water infrastructures, and processes of commodification and financialisation. The chapter then examines the everyday practices and hydraulic relations generated by and transformative of these hegemonic projects. Drawing on recent geographic interventions, it discusses how everyday practices may (re)produce classed, racialised and gendered differentiation, and variegated citizenship, thereby entrenching water inequalities. At the same time, everyday practices can work to incrementally erode and subvert established authoritative patterns producing water inequalities. Creating incremental spaces of possibility for more equitable and inclusive water access is crucial in times in which structural transformations appear increasingly more difficult to achieve.
