What Is Water?: The History of a Modern Abstraction

by Jamie Linton

Overview

We all know what water is, and we often take it for granted. But the spectre of a worldwide water crisis suggests that there might be something fundamentally wrong with the way we think about water. Jamie Linton dives into the history of water as an abstract concept, stripped of its environmental, social, and cultural contexts. Reduced to a scientific abstraction – to mere H20 – this concept has given modern society licence to dam, divert, and manipulate water with apparent impunity. Part of the solution to the water crisis involves reinvesting water with social content, thus altering the way we see water. An original take on a deceptively complex issue, What Is Water? offers a fresh approach to a fundamental problem.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780774817028
Publisher:	University of British Columbia Press
Publication date:	07/01/2010
Series:	Nature | History | Society
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

Illustrations vii

Foreword Graeme Wynn ix

Perface xvii

Part 1 Introduction

1 Fixing the Flow: The Things We Make of Water 3

2 Relational Dialectics: Putting Things in Fluid Terms 24

Part 2 The History of Modern Water

3 Intimations of Modern Water 47

4 From Premodern Waters to Modern Water 73

5 The Hydrologic Cycle(s): Scientific and Sacred 105

6 The Hortonian Hydrologic Cycle 126

7 Reading the Resource: Modern Water, the Hydrologic Cycle, and the State 148

8 Culmination: Global Water 162

Part 3 The Constitutional Crisis of Modern Water

9 The Constitution of Modern Water 175

10 Modern Water in Crisis 191

11 Sustaining Modern Water: The New "Global Water Regime" 212

Part 4 Conclusion: What Becomes of Water

12 Hydrolectics 223

Notes 248

Bibliography 295

Index 324

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The book demonstrates, in a clear and concise fashion, the ways in which contemporary social relationships with water have constituted a crisis. The subject is of fundamental importance, and the author's emphasis on the need to posit environmental concerns within a socio—natural understanding is vital."—Alex Loftus, University of London

Alex Loftus

The book demonstrates, in a clear and concise fashion, the ways in which contemporary social relationships with water have constituted a crisis. The subject is of fundamental importance, and the author's emphasis on the need to posit environmental concerns within a socio—natural understanding is vital.