Cleaning Up the System: A Tale of Paranoia and Practices

This study addresses water over-consumption by exploring mundane routinised cleaning behaviours. A 20-month ethnography of ten Malaysian Chinese families revealed how intensive cleaning practices are “locked in” to a complex system driven by paranoia. The findings reinforce critique of the dominant rationalist individualist behaviour change paradigm; revealing that narrow, shallow, and simplistic approaches cannot address broad, deep, and complicated social and environmental problems.This study offers a new conceptualisation of behaviour change that draws on practice and consumer culture theories for policymakers to dive deeply into the root causes and socio-cultural meanings underlying those problems caused by ordinary consumption.