
Delta Futures
Time, Territory, and Capture on a Climate Frontier
Jason Cons(Author)
University of California Press
1st Edition
Published on 4. March 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
210 pages
978-0-520-41418-1 (ISBN)
Description
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.
Delta Futures explores the competing visions of the future that are crowding into the Bengal Delta's imperiled present and vying for control of its ecologically vulnerable terrain. In Bangladesh's southwest, development programs that imagine the delta as a security threat unfold on the same ground as initiatives that frame the delta as a conservation zone and as projects that see the delta's rivers and ports as engines for industrial growth. Jason Cons explores how these competing futures are being brought to life: how they are experienced, understood, and contested by those who live and work in the delta, and the often surprising entanglements they engender-between dredgers and embankments, tigers and tiger prawns, fishermen and forest bandits, and more. These future visions produce the delta as a "climate frontier," a zone where opportunity, expropriation, and risk in the present are increasingly framed in relation to disparate visions of the delta's climate-affected future.
Delta Futures explores the competing visions of the future that are crowding into the Bengal Delta's imperiled present and vying for control of its ecologically vulnerable terrain. In Bangladesh's southwest, development programs that imagine the delta as a security threat unfold on the same ground as initiatives that frame the delta as a conservation zone and as projects that see the delta's rivers and ports as engines for industrial growth. Jason Cons explores how these competing futures are being brought to life: how they are experienced, understood, and contested by those who live and work in the delta, and the often surprising entanglements they engender-between dredgers and embankments, tigers and tiger prawns, fishermen and forest bandits, and more. These future visions produce the delta as a "climate frontier," a zone where opportunity, expropriation, and risk in the present are increasingly framed in relation to disparate visions of the delta's climate-affected future.
Reviews / Votes
"Cons takes us on a journey into the heart of the Bengal delta, where alternate futures of peril and promise gain traction within the 'multidimensional complexity' of cultural repertoires, social histories, and geopolitical contentions shaping everyday lives-the result is a rich narrative account of the region's 'material ecology and politics' * Developing Economies * "The book's thoughtful conceptual and insightful theoretical offerings are incredibly valuable for anthropologists, geographers, and sociologists engaged in larger considerations of the agrarian question of climate change." * The Journal of Peasant Studies * "Delta Futures is an elegant reminder that the future is never singular, but always plural, contested, and captured in the messy terrains of the present." * Asian Affairs * "It is an important contribution to the rich literature on an area of transnational interest and will benefit not just social scientists but policymakers and activists alike to be sensitive to the deltaic temporalities of Bengal."* H-Asia *
More details
Edition
First Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Berkerley
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
29 color illustrations, 1 map
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
363 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-520-41418-1 (9780520414181)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
03/2025
1st Edition
Naval Institute Press
€12.49
Available for download
Person
Jason Cons is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Sensitive Space: Fragmented Territory at the India-Bangladesh Border.