Drinking-Water and drinking water: Trajectories of Provision and Consumption in the UK, Taiwan and Delhi

In many advanced economies, water is one of the most taken-for-granted and ?ordinary? objects of consumption. However, the emergence of all-purpose (including drinking) water was the outcome of long and varied historical processes, involving major changes in both systems of provision and patterns of consumption. In many parts of the world, there are still different types and sources of water for different consumption purposes, and there are significant inequalities in rights over this most basic resource, especially water fit for drinking. Water presents a critical lens to explore organisations of economies of a good, which are often a complex mix of private, commercial, or public systems of provision. This paper will argue that an ?instituted economic process? approach is fruitful in exploring diverse configurations of production, appropriation, distribution and consumption of water. In particular, it will argue that practices of consumption are best analysed as integral and necessary dimensions of these wider configurations of economic organisation. The analysis will draw on my current comparative research in the UK, Delhi and Taiwan, and empirically demonstrates the need to problematise water as a consumption good, in order to understand its rich and complex diversity. This research arose from my comparative research on bottled water, undertaken in the wider research programme of the ESRC Sustainable Practices Research Group.