ABSTRACT
This chapter uses insights from the actor network approach to analyse the breakdown and subsequent reordering of the water network in Yorkshire. It presents an explanation of water networks as actor networks and the implications of this has for our understanding of the concept of heterogeneity and the relations between animate and inanimate objects. Modern water supply systems are extremely complex social and technological networks. Actor network approaches focus on how human actors enrol' pieces of technology and machines, as well as documents, texts and money, into actor networks', configured across space and time. The breakdown revealed social and technical complexities that were previously hidden under the old relational circumstances of a stabilized network. The network was eventually restabilized by a parallel strategy of increasing network mobility and calculability. Each strategy was a complex socio-technical achievement involving the enrolment of many actors.
