Waterworlds
Anthropology in Fluid Environments
1st Edition
Published on 1. November 2015
Book
Hardback
318 pages
978-1-78238-946-0 (ISBN)
Description
In one form or another, water participates in the making and unmaking of people's lives, practices, and stories. Contributors' detailed ethnographic work analyzes the union and mutual shaping of water and social lives. This volume discusses current ecological disturbances and engages in a world where unbounded relationalities and unsettled frames of orientation mark the lives of all, anthropologists included. Water emerges as a fluid object in more senses than one, challenging anthropologists to foreground the mutable character of their objects of study and to responsibly engage with the generative role of cultural analysis.
Reviews / Votes
"This collection is a rich quarry of manifold explorations of malleable, multiple, and vital waters in social and cultural life, which are always simultaneously a matter of concern for various political actions, and expressive of their own agentive capacities. Despite - or perhaps because of - the multiplicity of waters and approaches, it can be regarded as an asset to have these contributions combined in one book." ? Anthropos"...anthropology is not a newcomer to the study of water as an object and agent of social organization and cultural imagining, and the current volume introduces the reader to a good deal of this literature. But it also makes an original contribution by assembling a quantity of ethnographic cases and applying the anthropological perspective to issues of knowledge, management, and morality. The collected ethnographies illustrate, to quote Levi-Strauss, that water is not only good to drink but good to think." ? Anthropology Review Database
"A superb book, the chapters provide a wide range of approaches, from excellent descriptive ethnography to hard-hitting critiques of development practice. Water's qualities provide a common theme and inspire groundbreaking theory." ? Marc Brightman, University College London
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Product notice
Library binding
Illustrations
Bibliography; Index; 27 Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
616 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78238-946-0 (9781782389460)
DOI
10.3167/9781782389460
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
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E-Book
11/2015
1st Edition
Berghahn Books
€24.49
Available for download
E-Book
11/2015
Berghahn Books
€116.99
Available for download
Persons
Kirsten Hastrup is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. She received an ERC Advanced Grant in 2008, enabling the collaborative research project Waterworlds (2009-2014). Among her publications are three monographs based on her work on long-term natural and social histories in Iceland. Since then she has worked in Greenland and published many edited volumes such as Anthropology and Nature (2014).
Content
Preface
Introduction: Waterworlds at Large
Kirsten Hastrup and Frida Hastrup
Chapter 1. East Anglian Fenland: Water, the Work of Imagination, and the Creation of Value
Richard D. G. Irvine
Chapter 2. Fluid Entitlements: Constructing and Contesting Water Allocations in Burkina Faso, West Africa
Ben Orlove, Carla Roncoli, and Brian Dowd-Uribe
Chapter 3. Raining in the Andes: Disrupted Seasonal and Hydrological Cycles
Astrid B. Stensrud
Chapter 4. Respect and Passion in a Lagoon in the South Pacific
Cecilie Rubow
Chapter 5. West African Waterworlds: Narratives of Absence versus Narratives of Excess
Mette Fog Olwig and Laura Vang Rasmussen
Chapter 6. To the Lighthouse: Making a Liveable World by the Bay of Bengal
Frida Hastrup
Chapter 7. Enacting Groundwaters in Tarawa, Kiribati: Searching for Facts and Articulating Concerns
Maria Louise Bonnelykke Robertson
Chapter 8. Mapping Urban Waters: Grounds and Figures on an Ethnographic Water Path
Astrid Oberborbeck Andersen
Chapter 9. Water Literacy in the Sahel: Understanding Rain and Ground Water
Anette Reenberg
Chapter 10. Deep Time and Shallow Waters: Configurations of an Irrigation Channel in the Andes
Mattias Borg Rasmussen
Chapter 11. Moral Valves and Fluid Properties: Water Regulation Mechanisms in the Badia of Southeastern Mauritania
Christian Vium
Chapter 12. Reflecting Nature: Water Beings in History and Imagination
Veronica Strang
Chapter 13. The North Water: Life on the Ice Edge in the High Arctic
Kirsten Hastrup
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Waterworlds at Large
Kirsten Hastrup and Frida Hastrup
Chapter 1. East Anglian Fenland: Water, the Work of Imagination, and the Creation of Value
Richard D. G. Irvine
Chapter 2. Fluid Entitlements: Constructing and Contesting Water Allocations in Burkina Faso, West Africa
Ben Orlove, Carla Roncoli, and Brian Dowd-Uribe
Chapter 3. Raining in the Andes: Disrupted Seasonal and Hydrological Cycles
Astrid B. Stensrud
Chapter 4. Respect and Passion in a Lagoon in the South Pacific
Cecilie Rubow
Chapter 5. West African Waterworlds: Narratives of Absence versus Narratives of Excess
Mette Fog Olwig and Laura Vang Rasmussen
Chapter 6. To the Lighthouse: Making a Liveable World by the Bay of Bengal
Frida Hastrup
Chapter 7. Enacting Groundwaters in Tarawa, Kiribati: Searching for Facts and Articulating Concerns
Maria Louise Bonnelykke Robertson
Chapter 8. Mapping Urban Waters: Grounds and Figures on an Ethnographic Water Path
Astrid Oberborbeck Andersen
Chapter 9. Water Literacy in the Sahel: Understanding Rain and Ground Water
Anette Reenberg
Chapter 10. Deep Time and Shallow Waters: Configurations of an Irrigation Channel in the Andes
Mattias Borg Rasmussen
Chapter 11. Moral Valves and Fluid Properties: Water Regulation Mechanisms in the Badia of Southeastern Mauritania
Christian Vium
Chapter 12. Reflecting Nature: Water Beings in History and Imagination
Veronica Strang
Chapter 13. The North Water: Life on the Ice Edge in the High Arctic
Kirsten Hastrup
Notes on Contributors