ABSTRACT
The water flowing down the Stour is both natural and cultural, responsive to a changing spatial, temporal, physical and ideational landscape. The meanings themselves – water as the spirit, as life, as social, connective substance, as wealth and power, as generative source and regenerative sea, as nature, id, emotion and unconscious – all of these permeate the interactions that people have with water. Knowledge and expertise in the management of water has also de-localised, shifting control to epistemic communities, networks of scientists, whose focus is specialised and general rather than holistic and particular. Meanwhile the water supply infrastructure – the glory of the Victorians – is crumbling away, and in a shaky global economy investors are harder to find. The meanings of water as a social substance, and as the element most essential to the regeneration of the shared environment and human ‘being’, point to an important tie between involvement in resource management and collective responsibility for limiting demand.
