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City Water Matters pp 105–134Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Embodied Water Entanglements: Sex/Gender, Race/Ethnicity and Class Urban Sanitation Practices

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Abstract

This chapter argues that how and where bodies are washed and defecate and how clothes get washed in the city is by far from a trivial affair. Rather, practices of cleanliness impact on the spatiality and sociality of cities. Yet the relative invisibility of these practices and lack of attention to their urban effects lie both in their gendered, ethnic and classed nature and in the disgust around dirty products associated with bodies. At the same time the socio- material and technological context of the city makes possible or constrains the possibilities for washing bodies and clothes. Clean bodies are thus constituted by and constitutive of city spaces in unequal relations of difference. These interconnected networks of bodies/water sites/buildings/technologies form an entangled web where cleanliness is enacted in different ways across time and space.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/Collections-Research/Research/Your-Research/X20L/Themes/1382/1202/.

  2. 2.

    http://www.southwark.gov.uk/news/article/161/from_filthy_laundries_to_fresh_new_hidden_homes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sociology Department, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

    Sophie Watson

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  1. Sophie Watson
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Correspondence to Sophie Watson .

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Watson, S. (2019). Embodied Water Entanglements: Sex/Gender, Race/Ethnicity and Class Urban Sanitation Practices. In: City Water Matters. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7892-8_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7892-8_5

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-7891-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-7892-8

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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