Abstract
In this study, I investigate how state-dominated rural household water governance affects local responses to water-related risks during extreme weather events and environmental changes in rural China. This form of governance is centralized and standardized, manifested in its material and moral dimensions: (1) modern technology and infrastructure, involving facilities for centralized and standardized water access, quality management, and household water use; and (2) morality, represented by the norms of centralized and standardized water purification in managing water quality and in the installation of standardized modern flush toilets which increases household water use as opposed to traditional practices. Based upon ethnographic fieldwork, I examine the water-related risks associated with such governance during droughts, cold snaps, and changes in land use around water sources, and how villagers did not demand state intervention but instead turned to alternative practices when possible, thus disengaging from different aspects of the state-dominated water governance. In their responses, villagers enhanced their resilience by increasing physical capacities to cope with tap water-related risks. Realizing that the state-dominated governance was inadequate, they cultivated their resilience to regain control in addressing risks. I thus term villagers’ responses as ‘resilient disengagement’, located between resignation and activism.
In the autumn and winter of 2020, Zhejiang Province experienced severe drought, followed by a cold snap in January of 2021. 1 During this period, residents of Mountainside village 2 faced a tap water shortage. They complained that there was ‘no water’, referring not only to a shortage of drinking water, but also a lack of running water for modern flush toilets, which consumes much of the same tap water. The local government had installed flush toilets in 2020 to replace traditional non-flushing toilets. 3 One villager, Uncle Feng, designed his own hybrid toilet, incorporating features of both flush and traditional toilets. He sourced locally available materials to make the seat, but added a valve at the bottom that could be turned on and off to physically separate the septic tank storing manure from the above-ground part of the toilet. He built another gated opening to access the night soil or ‘human waste’ which was used as manure when needed for farming. He did so even before the local government installed modern flush toilets. He was satisfied with his toilet design which in his view helped address issues related to odour, sanitation, and the utilization of night soil. Uncle Feng’s toilet also worked when modern flush toilets malfunctioned during tap water shortages.
In conventionally water-rich regions, such as east and south China, seasonal water shortages have been on the rise, which aligns with observations on the global scale. 4 The Ministry of Water Resources has actively funded and promoted rural drinking water projects, aiming to provide stable and safe water supplies. 5 However, despite the government’s increasing attention and investment in public water service delivery, water risks persist. These risks continue to evolve in local contexts, encompassing concerns such as agrichemical contamination, water scarcity during droughts, and eutrophication at water sources. 6 Researchers have examined how local residents responded to these ineffective, state-led drinking water projects. 7 For instance, in semi-arid areas, local residents integrated government-funded tap water into private water markets to enhance their resilience against water scarcity and tap water supply instabilities. 8 Zhejiang Province reported that 99 per cent of all its villages had access to tap water in 2018. 9 Rural residents in Zhejiang have extensive experience of state-dominated governance of household water supply and use, as illustrated in the opening vignette on modern flush toilets. Therefore, it is essential to explore how state-dominated rural household water governance, or its ‘actual governing’, 10 affects residents’ responses to evolving water-related risks.
In this article, I aim to elucidate how state-dominated governance of rural household water supply and use impacts villagers’ experiences and practices concerning water-related risks. Based on villagers’ concerns that I observed during fieldwork and follow-up interviews, I divide my discussion into three topics, each pertinent to a specific aspect of governance: (1) water access, (2) water source preservation, and (3) water use. 11 I conclude that state-dominated water governance could give rise to situations where it was difficult for villagers to demand governmental responses to address these risks. Villagers thus disengaged from specific aspects of governance. I introduce the concept of disengagement to describe local actors’ non-participation in specific aspects of state-led governance, whether voluntarily or not. It is important to note that disengagement or non-participation in a specific aspect of governance can interchange with participation under certain circumstances. For instance, villagers could participate in state-led governance by installing modern flush toilets to improve sanitation, thereby increasing household water use. However, some villagers could also disengage by partially maintaining traditional toilet practices, allowing them to access manure for farming and to manage sanitation issues when flush toilets fail to work during droughts or cold snaps. Such disengagement is contingent on specific contexts, such as limiting collective tap water for certain uses. The forms of disengagement are dependent on local actors’ accompanying practices ranging from resignation to activism.
In my research, villagers followed alternative practices, or set up plans and had potential resources to adopt such practices, outside of water governance when feasible. I use the term ‘alternative practices’ to refer to local actors’ small-scale practices that aim to deal with the present risks, but not with political and societal changes driving such risks. Alternative practices thus fall between resignation – that normalizes such risks – and activism. 12 Villagers’ alternative practices demonstrated their efforts to increase resilience to cope with water-related risks. I follow Gérard Hutter and Daniel F. Lorenz’s definition of ‘social resilience’ to refer to local actors’ capacities to ‘adapt to and recover from disturbances’, including capacities not only in the physical sense, but also in terms of meaning-making and learning. 13 Therefore, I introduce the term ‘resilient disengagement’ to refer to local actors’ disengagement accompanied by alternative practices to cope with present environmental risks physically, as well as meaning-making to foster resilience. But first, I will define state-dominated governance of rural household water supply and use, and briefly discuss it in relation to villagers’ responses to address tap water-related risks.
In state-dominated governance of rural household water, the state assumes a commanding role in determining which freshwater sources villagers can access, the methods of access, water quality management, and household water use, including for sanitation purposes. 14 In Zhejiang, where I conducted my ethnographic fieldwork, governance of rural household water emphasizes centralization and standardization to ensure water safety in terms of both quantity and quality, aligning with national policies. 15 For example, freshwater sources are collected and stored in a single water tank or reservoir to serve the entire village; and purification is carried out through one set of equipment. The provincial government in Zhejiang has expressed its aim to achieve ‘the same quality of water between rural and urban areas’. 16 Additionally, this standardization is also evident in the widespread implementation of modern flush toilets (hereby referred to ‘flush toilet modernization’). 17 The same collective freshwater sources for household drinking and cooking are also used to operate flush toilets in household sanitation. The governance of rural household water encompasses the deployment of modern technology and infrastructure to control villagers’ access to extra water sources (see detailed discussion in the section on social stability); water quality management at the water sources of piped water systems (see the discussion under the heading ‘lack of response’); and household water use (discussed in the section on moral critique). 18 Village committees are responsible for the daily maintenance of household water supply and use by employing personnel to carry out relevant tasks. 19 Some of these maintenance practices, such as self-organized water tank cleaning, water pipe repairs, and water rationing, follow communal and customary practices. 20 However, state-dominated governance of rural household water supply and use can have a significant impact on daily operations, especially during extreme weather and environmental changes.
Moreover, building upon modern technology and infrastructure, the state has established specific norms to standardize villagers’ practices related to water, constituting the morality aspect of state-dominated governance. In using standardized purification facilities, the state sets the norm of managing water quality at water sources. The state has also incorporated the implementation of standardized modern flush toilets as part of its project to ‘civilize’ rural villages, aligning with its long-standing efforts to transform rural areas in the name of ‘civilization’. 21 In these processes, the state aims to change villagers’ existing practices of managing water quality and household water use, which have an impact on villagers’ traditional connections with water sources as well as relevant practices such as using manure as fertilizer for farming. In essence, state-dominated or centralized and standardized rural household water governance aims to control villagers’ relations with water through both the material and moral aspects. These aspects interweave different aspects of governing rural household water.
When faced with environmental challenges, scholars have observed that local residents often do not demand government intervention to address problems. Residents either do not resort to government assistance or find that their appeals for help are not answered. With regard to residents not resorting to government assistance, researchers have found that hegemony affects people’s practices. 22 I borrow from Frances Cleaver’s definition of hegemony to describe ‘the ways in which power and the interests of dominant groups become embedded in norms, institutions and discourses and so are taken for granted’. 23 For instance, in the context of the state’s prioritization of development over environmental concerns, local residents may view pollution as inevitable in their struggles with water and air pollution caused by industries. 24 Government norms such as social stability maintenance can also deter local residents from confronting the state, even when governance is ineffective. 25 Hegemony is also related to social norms, such as connectedness, implying the ‘imperative for social connection’ for wellbeing. 26 Thus, even when perpetuating unequal relations, local actors can still choose to maintain relations over open confrontation. To understand the government’s unresponsiveness, researchers have analysed local residents’ experiences in interacting with the state, including its local government. 27 Researchers have uncovered the state’s unresponsiveness, or even repression, when local residents’ demands for action clash with state-defined objectives of maintaining social stability and economic development. For example, the local government may ignore local residents’ demands to address pollution issues due to its aligned economic interests with polluting industries or projects. 28 When local residents’ actions heighten the state’s concern over stability, the state may resort to forceful repression and other disciplinary measures. 29 Local residents’ perception of governance as ineffective in general can also discourage them from asking for government intervention. 30 In the following sections, I will explore how state-dominated rural household water governance drove situations where local residents were affected by such hegemonic norms and the local governments’ unresponsiveness. I will also examine specific aspects of state-dominated governance from which residents disengaged.
Despite being unable to rely on the government to tackle tap water-related risks, villagers in the study did not just wait and resign themselves to these challenges. They carried out alternative practices outside the system of state-dominated water governance to alleviate the impact of these risks. 31 In addition to Mountainside, I also examined local actors’ responses in Wood-Rock, the other field site, in my study on the deployment of technology and infrastructure. With regard to water quality management at the water sources of piped water systems as well as to household water use, Mountainside villagers’ practices and experiences formed the focus of discussion. These responses shed light on how residents dealt with risks through disengagement from state-dominated governance and adopting various alternative practices, including small-scale self-reliant water projects such as private water supply systems, issues which have received less attention compared to activism. 32 While villagers remained unsuccessful in changing governmental responses, 33 their alternative practices accompanying disengagement from state-dominated water governance, constituted their endeavour to foster resilience.
Ethnography of two Chinese villages
I conducted ethnographic fieldwork between October 2020 and April 2021, spending three months in Wood-Rock and three months in Mountainside. I conducted participant observation ethnography, and spoke with over 250 villagers, as well as construction workers in both villages. During fieldwork I was caught in a drought and experienced cold snaps that afflicted both villages. After reviewing my notes and other data away from the field, I identified specific types of water risk, and I followed up my fieldwork with additional interviews between March and October 2022. While these interviews provided valuable insights, it is important to note that they do not represent the experiences of all villagers, because access was limited to those with whom I had the means to contact digitally. Nevertheless, these interviews complemented background information on identified risks gathered from the fieldwork. The data from these follow-up interviews were triangulated with information obtained from other interviews, archives, and field notes. In total, I conducted 32 semi-structured field and online interviews, including 14 with previous and then incumbent village committee cadres and governmental officials at the town and county levels. I supplemented data on the government by visiting the county archive and city museums, and collecting relevant documents and digital data from government portals, news media, and local archives. In analysing the data, I coded information on different aspects of village life, such as gender, water-related practices, and experiences of water governance. 34 Both the coding and writing processes helped me to formulate the research question, enabling me to effectively address it using data obtained from the fieldwork.
Mountainside is located in northeastern Zhejiang and has a registered population of over 1500. According to the village committee’s records, around 300 permanent residents, mostly in their 70s, reside in the village. The majority of these residents are engaged in agricultural practices, including self-sufficient farming and cash cropping, combined with temporary work such as working on construction sites. Wood-Rock, located in southern Zhejiang, is comparatively smaller in terms of size and population. Among the registered population of over 500, only around 100 live there permanently. There are very few villagers below the age of 30. The main exceptions are young mothers taking care of their babies, and pre-kindergarten children under the care of grandparents while their parents work in the city. Most of the permanent residents who remain in the village are migrant workers or businesspeople who have returned, especially men. They are involved in temporary work, the service economy, or self-sufficient farming.
Social stability
To cope with limited rainfall and water shortages starting in early November 2020, Wood-Rock villagers had to ration water use and pump river water collectively. The existing centralized piped water system malfunctioned during the drought, and the plan for constructing an extra water tank for villagers to access additional water was halted by the local government. I will elucidate how risks of both scarcity and poor water quality arose, and how centralized water governance affected villagers’ responses to such risks.
In Wood-Rock, the county government started to increase its centralization and standardization in household water governance, especially with regard to water supply in the early 2000s. Firstly, the government partially funded a collective water tank in the hills. Then, in the mid-2010s, the government covered over 80 per cent of the cost of building a new, larger water tank. The government rented out the old collective water tank to a construction project for its workers’ everyday water use. They also funded the purification equipment placed in a small hut beside the new water tank to treat spring water before it was stored in the tank. After purification, this tank water was piped to each Wood-Rock household. Uncle Niu, who had returned from his migrant businesses in other provinces and at the time of the fieldwork was running a hostel in the village, participated in the construction of the small hut and installation of the purification equipment inside. He said, ‘As long as the water went through the hut, it was disinfected.’ Villagers self-organized to clean the tank about once a year. Since its completion, the collective tap water from this new water tank has remained the largest provider of drinking water for Wood-Rock villagers. The state-dominated governance thus centralized control over household water supplies through modern infrastructure for water source access, storage, and quality management.
Unfortunately, the standardized and centralized water purification infrastructure failed to incorporate extra water sources during the drought. When there was insufficient spring water from the water sources connected to the collective piped water system, villagers had no other choice but to pump water from the river. However, the river water was scant due to a lack of rainfall, and it became polluted from chemical fertilizers used in the fields along the bank and from the presence of excavators and other construction activities for a road-widening project on the riverbed. Nevertheless, villagers pumped river water directly into the collective water tank without it being purified. Uncle Shui, a member of the village committee, was recruited in 2018 to oversee the day-to-day operations of the water tank. He routinely checks the tank after each heavy rainfall, and when it runs out of water, he turns off the valve so that there is water reserved for evening use. However, these measures for daily management are mainly concerned with water quantity and are inadequate during emergencies when river water is not purified. When the local government centralized its control over tap water quality management through purification equipment but did not incorporate extra water sources in the purification system, villagers became susceptible to risks of polluted river water during the drought.
In ignoring the risk of polluted river water being used as drinking water, the local government reshaped villagers’ needs for increased access to safe water into demands for an extra water tank. On the one hand, construction project personnel residing in the village increased water demands. The construction projects nearby further enhanced the risk of water shortages when construction activities damaged underground water pipes, and villagers had to organize an informal, ad hoc team to fix the broken pipes. On the other hand, villagers were prohibited from drawing private piped water from springs. One male villager complained that after the local government sponsored the new water tank, villagers had to stop privately sourcing spring water, despite some of them practising this for more than a decade. Mr Lin, a village cadre, reasoned that the water supply should be designed and installed either by professional workers or by the village collective, or else it would be problematic during water shortages. Villagers’ decreasing access to existing collective water sources and denied access to private water supply systems in state-led centralized water access governance, led to villagers to demand an extra water tank.
However, villagers had not accessed extra water from the planned tank, and they also refrained from demanding that the local government implement the plan. Uncle Che, a village store owner, was a former village representative. According to him, increasing tap water access was one of the tasks that the newly elected village leadership was obligated to perform during their term. During my fieldwork, Wood-Rock villagers sought additional sites to construct a larger water tank and upgrade their water facilities sponsored by the local government. Most villagers were optimistic and believed that the new tank would resolve frequent water cuts within a couple of years. However, as of March 2022 (a year and a half later), construction of the tank had not commenced. In follow-up interviews with village cadres, I learned that the local government had halted the project. Although the local government did not fulfil its promise to implement the planned construction, villagers also did not demand that they resume the project either, thus disengaging from the materiality aspect of state-dominated governance of accessing extra water sources. According to Mr Lin, the plan was put aside due to complaints filed by Water-Stone residents, because the upgraded tank would be located in their area. Mr Lin complained that the local government had ‘not put in enough effort’ and instead, prioritized maintaining social stability. Understanding the local government’s change of stance – from supporting the project to halting it – as an outcome of social stability concerns, Mr Lin realized that it would be challenging to reverse this decision.
This situation is reminiscent of findings from a study by Qinhong Xu, Rutgerd Boelens, and Gert Jan Veldwisch, in which local residents disengaged from a state-sponsored rural drinking water safety project, the water source of which was exposed to the risk of agrichemical contamination. 35 Villagers relied on bottled water and filters from the market, instead of demanding that the local government address the unsatisfactory water supply because of their concerns over confronting the government and possible repression from the government in its attempt to maintain social stability. In my study, the hegemonic norm of stability maintenance also played a role in Wood-Rock villagers’ disengagement. However, the issue of stability maintenance was not only anticipated but also produced in the implementation process of governance. State-dominated rural household water governance through modern infrastructure to centralize control over water access reshaped Wood-Rock villagers’ demands and local government’s implementation plans, resulting in complaints from residents involved in the implementation and consequently the issue of stability maintenance. Wood-Rock villagers were not the ones who directly caused social instability, yet they refrained from demanding that the government continue its implementation of improving water access via the planned tank.
Faced with little room to influence the local government’s response, villagers began thinking of alternative practices. Mr Lin had plans to build purification facilities to make river water a reliable source of drinking water. Given the limited resources available at the village level, his plans had to be temporarily put on hold. Mr Lin had mixed feelings of hope and a sense of resignation. He sighed and said that ‘there is no way’ to deal with the risk of the polluted river water, and he assured himself that as long as the river water was boiled, it would be fine. Nonetheless, Mr Lin’s plan illustrated villagers’ potential capacity to physically cope with tap water-related risks from polluted river water. Villagers’ mutual assistance during summer rainstorms to prevent mud from contaminating tap water by filtering their neighbours’ water also showed existing physical capacities to address other water risks. Furthermore, the local government’s changing responses and Wood-Rock villagers’ disengagement from centralized state-led governance to access extra water themselves, motivated the villagers or reinforced the idea of regaining a sense of control. In Mr Lin’s words, villagers had to ‘rely on themselves rather than the government’. Villagers’ disengagement and subsequent plans for alternative practices thus demonstrated their cultivation of resilience. In learning that state-dominated governance did not work, villagers expected that they had to start to address environmental risks themselves. In this way, they could also develop physical capacities to cope with risks to materialize plans and mobilize resources. In the next section, I will examine how certain aspects of water source protection governance affected villagers’ responses.
Lack of response
For Mountainside villagers, the biggest risk of consuming tap water is the potential contamination of agrichemicals used in farmland surrounding their water reservoir. Many villagers’ concerns are manifested in their everyday water use in which they adopt practices such as using alternative water sources for drinking when possible. In this section, I will examine how risks related to water source quality emerged, and how centralized and standardized water purification influenced villagers’ responses.
In Mountainside, the local government maintains collective tap water quality through centralized water purification and the zoning of protection areas. 36 In front of the reservoir, there is a placard indicating the boundaries of the rural water source protection zone (a 0.12-kilometre radius around the reservoir). It conforms to provincial regulations since Mountainside’s water station supplies 240 tons/day, exceeding the 200 tons/day which is a limit set by the state, entailing demarcation. The village committee assigns one villager to regularly inspect the reservoir which supplies water to the village water station, and to manage the use of detergents to purify the tank water. According to a town official, monitoring the water quality is mainly outsourced to a private company, which aligns with the county policy introduced at the end of 2020. During my stay, I did not encounter personnel from this particular company that was contracted by the local government, nor did villagers mention them. Aside from cadres, few villagers understood the purification process, let alone water testing. This lack of transparency obscured villagers’ perception of tap water quality, and it remains to be seen whether transparency in tap water quality information can change villagers’ responses towards such risks. Top–down and centralized water quality control measures had not alleviated villagers’ concerns about water quality.
Villagers were aware of the risk of agrichemical contamination and took measures to protect their drinking water from this risk. Before the introduction of collective tap water, they relied on wells and springs for drinking water. Some villagers installed private piped water systems to access spring water for domestic use. They selected sites where they could negotiate with relevant villagers over agricultural use to ensure that the water source was relatively distant from farmland. In this way, they trusted that the water source was relatively free from agrichemical contamination. The general assumption was that as long as a water source was located at a certain distance away from farming activities, the water would be safe. Similarly, when constructing the current reservoir for the piped water system in the 1990s, the village committee was conscious of the risk of agrichemical contamination. Uncle Ru, an ex-village cadre residing in the county seat with his family, told me that the village committee selected a location situated higher than the surrounding rice paddies to reduce contamination risks. Although there was farmland close by, it was abandoned in the 1990s because many villagers had migrated to the cities to seek job opportunities. That water source was therefore considered safe.
However, changing land use in the area surrounding the reservoir eventually put the water source under threat of agrichemical contamination. According to Uncle Ru, in the 1990s, the local government started to encourage reforestation to replace rice farming and to develop a cash crop economy. Although horticulture and other cash crops were not so popular at the time, it later became economically profitable for villagers to re-cultivate the land, including areas surrounding the reservoir. Up until October 2022, of the total 1,290 mu (6.6 mu = 1 acre) of agricultural land, there were 250 mu of peach orchards (19.4%) and 250 mu for horticulture which was reduced by 200 mu due to stricter enforcement of farmland protection that involved recovering rice paddies from other uses in 2022. 37 Whether from cash crop horticulture or rice plantations, farmland use around the reservoir caused villagers to worry about the quality of the water sources and tap water.
To address concerns about water quality, villagers demanded intervention from the village committee to change land use in the area surrounding the reservoir. In follow-up interviews conducted after my fieldwork, I learned that villagers had attempted to negotiate with village cadres on this land use issue, but their efforts seemed futile. Uncle Wu, a former manager of a now-bankrupt village enterprise and currently engaged in subsistence farming, sighed and stated that ‘no one discusses the land with the peach orchards anymore’, which may explain why I was unaware of these negotiations during my fieldwork. Ms Guo, a village cadre living in Mountainside, explained that the village committee had no authority to prohibit individual villagers from planting whatever they wanted on their contracted land. Village cadres could, at most, suggest that peach orchard owners use fewer agrichemicals and that they collect waste. She said that some had started to apply organic fertilizers and concluded that it was difficult for the village cadres to use the reservoir management regulation to solve the problem. The provincial-level water source protection regulation only bans the use of ‘highly toxic agrichemicals with high residue levels’ in rural areas. 38 Village cadres understood that they had little leeway to steer change in land use close to the reservoir without political priorities favouring water preservation over land governance. Echoing Ms Guo, Uncle Wu concluded that ‘there was no way for the village committee to manoeuvre as the land was [contracted to] individuals’ and added that ‘unless the government appropriated the land’, it was difficult to plan other uses for it. Consequently, villagers were unable to ask the local government to improve the water quality of sources that they trusted that would be fit for drinking.
Consequently, villagers disengaged from the material aspect of centralized and standardized tap water system, at least for a certain period of time and for certain uses. In western Hunan in Central China, Anna Lora-Wainwright examined the local government’s unresponsiveness towards villagers’ demands over safe tap water projects, and villagers’ own efforts to seek water sources and instal pipes since the 1990s. 39 In her case study, the government reasoned that their lack of response was due to financial and technical challenges of such water projects. In my case study, I observed that the government’s lack of response was driven by its lack of understanding of the villagers’ cognition of clean water in centralized and standardized governance of rural household water. 40 The material aspect of state-dominated governance embodied through standardized purification equipment also implies the morality aspect of setting modern technology and infrastructure as the norm to guarantee water quality. 41 Therefore, in provincial regulations to preserve water sources, the issue is not about farming activities per se, but whether the types of agrichemicals fulfil certain standards. Most Mountainside villagers believed that water quality is managed through ensuring distance from pollutants such as agrichemicals, which is reminiscent of practices in Wood-Rock and other mountainous villages. 42 Therefore, the centralized and standardized water governance ignored villagers’ system of managing water quality at sources, and the government became unresponsive to villagers’ demands, which led to their disengagement.
Villagers thus dealt with their concerns through alternative practices in everyday life and during emergencies. Residents located near foothills or wells – that they believed to contain clean water – commonly used spring water through private piped water systems and well water. Aunt Lan, a retired schoolteacher living in Mountainside, collaborated with her neighbours to access spring water and they built a tank for drinking water before collective tap water was available. She continued to use the system to supply drinking water. She argued that it was entirely feasible to eliminate the impact of agrichemicals on the water supply due to its small scale in rural villages compared to cities. She reasoned that rural water quality management at the water source should differ from urban management. Some villagers further filtered the spring water with equipment purchased from markets. When the system of collective tap water did not work during the cold snap in January 2021, villagers who relied on tap water also resorted to wells or springs from the hill. Uncle Wu explained that he selected the spring for drinking water because there were minimal farming practices, no households, and the cash crops on the hills were almost left unattended. It thus meant that he accessed water free from domestic waste and agrichemical contamination through water source selection. Although he sought alternative sources only when the quantity of collective tap was too low, he knew which water sources to turn to and which sources were reasonably safe. However, it should be pointed out that in the absence of testing, the quality of such water is uncertain. Villagers thus remain marginalized in the face of accessing state-provided quality water that also meets their standards. 43
Villagers’ alternative practices demonstrated their physical coping capacities towards tap water-related risks. Some villagers’ understanding of different water systems for rural and urban areas also illustrated disengagement from the aspect of morality in state-led governance, as well as their capacities for learning to regain control over water quality to enhance resilience. In the next section, I will discuss how aspects of governance over household water use influenced villagers’ responses
Moral critique
Like Wood-Rock villagers, Mountainside locals also suffered from tap water shortages during the cold snap and drought. However, Mountainside villagers were more concerned with water quantity than quality. Some argued that the tap water shortage was a result of the government’s introduction of flush toilets. In 2020, modern flush toilets were imposed to replace traditional toilets in Mountainside as part of a nationwide campaign to civilize rural areas. 44 In this section, I explore how standardized household water use for flush toilet modernization became relevant to water risk during extreme weather, and how such governance – especially its morality aspect – affected villagers’ responses.
The flush toilet modernization campaign served both as an aspect of rural household water governance and as a part of the state’s various projects on ‘rural civilization’. In an interview with the town government – administering villages including Mountainside – broadcast on a China Central Television (CCTV) programme on the environment in 2021, 45 the party secretary described modern toilet replacements as ‘projects aimed at improving livelihood, ecology, and civilization’. The toilet replacements aligned with a nationwide political campaign of ‘toilet revolution’, framed to improve the rural environment with standardized sewage treatment. Toilet replacement is thus claimed to achieve the state’s goals of improving sanitation and reducing pollution to fulfil ecological goals, ‘propelling civilization’ in rural villages by changing villagers’ habits and lifestyles. 46 It constituted a series of state policies and measures to transform rural life, framed as ‘civilizing’ rural areas and rural residents and embodying both material and moral aspects of state-led governance. 47
However, the modern flush toilets exacerbated villagers’ harsh experience with collective tap water shortages during the drought and cold snap, as mentioned in the vignette. Newly installed flush toilets were connected to running water from the collective tap water system that failed to function during the shortage. Due to this, villagers had no space to dispose night soil – especially those who no longer farmed – and many complained about water shortages. Some villagers blamed the flush toilets for causing the tap water shortage due to increased consumption of tap water after their installation. However, village cadres insisted that the tap water shortage was a result of frozen pipes. To save water, the local government advocated a pricing mechanism and promoted awareness of water-saving measures among villagers. These potential water fees would create an extra burden for villagers. The standardized flush toilets did not function during emergency situations; either because the reservoir was drying out or because of frozen pipes. Additionally, villagers’ need for night soil for farming (accessed through traditional household toilet practices) was also implicitly denied by the government during the flush toilet modernization campaign. Villagers appreciated the introduction of flush toilets for sanitation and convenience, but they could not rely solely on flush toilets when costs of water increased, when extreme weather created instability of the flush toilet system, and with regard to their need for household fertilizer for farming.
Although villagers complained that the local government did not properly plan for all the consequences of implementing flush toilets, their critique remained on moral grounds. Villagers criticized flush toilet modernization as being driven by the local government’s concerns over ‘face’. For villagers, face refers to the appearance of the village to visitors, including officials from higher levels of government. Scholars have observed criticisms from various sectors of society regarding local governments’ excessive focus on exterior appearances or image building in rural areas, often termed as face projects. 48 Mountainside villagers’ criticisms also questioned the moral aspect of toilet modernization, claiming that it did not align with their own practical needs. However, in framing the issue as one of face, villagers refrained from openly demanding policy change. Scholars have studied similar phenomena where local residents engaged in small-scale practices on their own instead of demanding government responses or action to meet their needs. 49 Xu, Boelens, and Veldwisch argued that it was the predominant neoliberal logic of assuming individual responsibility to resolve water quality problems that rural residents internalized and thus they did not demand local governments to meet their subsistence needs. 50 In my case study, the hegemonic social norm of ‘connectedness’ can be used to explain villagers’ constraints in taking confrontational action, though such constraints could maintain ineffective state-dominated governance and perpetuate injustice. 51 Villagers thus disengaged from the material aspect of standardized household wastewater governance by resorting to alternative practices, instead of demanding the local government to change its implementation.
Villagers adapted their traditional practices by partially preserving traditional toilets, not only during tap water shortages but also in everyday life, limiting their use of modern flush toilets. The local government compensated RMB 600 for every household that disabled their septic tank and switched to comprehensively implement flush toilet modernization. Nonetheless, it also tolerated villagers’ alternative practices that constituted forms of partial preservation. 52 For instance, Uncle Feng was compensated by the town government, although his aforementioned hybrid toilet still maintains a separate septic tank and has no flush system. Most villagers continued to store and use night soil, partially preserving their traditional toilets practices. Villagers legitimized their alternative practices by referring to state-recognized principles. For example, Uncle Shu, a former accountant in his 70s who worked in the city and lived in the village, commented on the loss of fertilizer in the absence of traditional toilets. He emphasized ‘adjusting measures to local conditions’ (因地制宜), a phrase appearing frequently in policy documents about policies tailored to local characteristics instead of a ‘one-size-fits-all approach’. 53 Extreme weather and the failure of modern toilets during emergencies reinforced the legitimacy of traditional practices. 54 Villagers also highlighted the long-standing tradition of their existing practices. Uncle Fa, a retired veterinarian and Daoist, emphasized that traditional toilets and farming practices represented ‘China’s ancient wisdom’ and ‘should all be used’. He showed me different kinds of toilets in his home. These alternative practices indicated villagers’ disengagement from the moral aspect of state-led governance in setting the norm that regards standardized sewage management as more civilized than traditional practices. Villagers’ practices also implied their cultivation of resilience through diversified household toilet practices. Their capacity to reinforce the idea of localized needs and measures also enhanced their resilience in maintaining a sense of control in preserving traditional practices.
Conclusion: Resilient disengagement from centralized and standardized rural household water governance
In this article, I have demonstrated how centralized state-dominated governance of rural household water affected villagers’ responses to water-related risks, especially how they reacted by disengaging from the government’s policies and carrying out alternative practices. The risks include water scarcity during droughts and cold snaps, as well as contamination from farming activities and other polluting sources. I have illustrated villagers’ disengagement from state-dominated governance under distinct circumstances. Where villagers’ access to extra water sources is concerned, centralized and standardized water access gave rise to social stability concerns during its implementation, in turn, hindering residents from demanding further action from the government. In the area of water quality management at the water sources of piped water systems, the focus on modern technology and infrastructure through centralized and standardized water purification caused the local government to become unresponsive to residents’ demands. Where household water use is concerned, the state’s flush toilet modernization – aiming to civilize the rural population – led to villagers’ moral critique of the local government instead of directly demanding that the latter change its policies because of the hegemonic social norms of connectedness. As a result, villagers did not seek or no longer sought the local government to address tap water-related risks and they disengaged from different aspects of state-dominated governance. It is worth noting that villagers’ disengagement interchanged with their participation in state-dominated governance of rural household water. For example, Mountainside villagers used the collective tap water system, but some chose not to use this tap water for drinking. Instead, villagers adopted alternative practices, increasing options for possible practices to improve their coping capacities when facing tap water-related risks. Their alternative practices included various self-reliant projects, such as private water supply systems organized by neighbouring villagers, ad hoc water pipe fixing team, and regular water tank cleaning. Their disengagement and alternative practices helped them regain some control in dealing with risks, thus increasing their resilience. Their responses reflected what I call resilient disengagement from state-dominated rural household water governance.
Resilient disengagement refers to local actors’ alternative practices in response to environmental challenges, accompanied by their disengagement from state-dominated governance. Local actors’ disengagement can take place under different circumstances due to their concerns over hegemonic norms or the state’s unresponsiveness to their demands, resulting from governance itself. Their alternative practices contribute to building resilience in local actors’ approaches to deal with the present risks and challenges, but do not yet constitute activism in producing political and social changes such as demanding policy changes. Resilient disengagement thus demonstrates local actors’ capacities to deal with present environmental risks in the face of inadequate state-dominated governance. Lora-Wainwright conceptualized ‘resigned activism’ to describe local actors’ responses, oscillating between two extremes – both activism and resignation – in their long-term engagement with pollution and polluting sources, which usually constitute their livelihood resources. 55 Resilient disengagement, on the other hand, represents a kind of practice that lies between these two extremes. Local actors resort to disengagement and alternative practices, when they find that they cannot rely on governmental intervention to address risks. At one extreme – activism – the aim is to produce political and societal changes through changing governmental responses. Although local actors do not resort to this specific type of activism, the phenomenon of disengagement warrants more attention in the context of state-dominated governance. In examining local actors’ responses to environmental challenges, the concept of resilient disengagement helps to conceptualize small-scale practices that are shaped by state-dominated governance, locating such responses between activism and resignation.
