Description
Book SynopsisThis book is about how water becomes people – or, put another way, how people and water flow together and shape each other. While the focus of the book is on the relationships held between water and people, it also has a broader message about human relationships with the environment generally – a message that illustrates not only that people are existentially entangled with the material world, but that the materials of the world shape, determine and enable humans to be ‘humans’ in the ways that they are. Offering a selection of anthropological examples from Kenya, Wales and Spain to illustrate how water’s materiality coproductively generates the way people are able to engage with water, this book uses cross-disciplinary perspectives to provide and promote a new analytic – one that encourages ethical, holistic and sustainable relationships with the world around us. This approach challenges representations that ignore, sidestep or are blind to the fleshy materiality of being human, and aims to encourage a re-imagining of the world that acknowledges humanity as intrinsically active-with and part of the fabric of the collection of materials we call planet Earth.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Preface Part One Chapter 1: Introduction The direction and purpose: New Materialities Materiality/Material Culture/ New Materialities Why water? People: bodies and water Agency Chapter 2: Water Behaviours: A Brief Ethnography of Water What is water? First light, then water Being liquid: physics, classifications, breaking the law and transformation How can one know water? Liquid behaviours The importance of movement: molecular sociology Solvents and solutions But how does water move? Circles, cycles and snakes The earth and the air Water: the shape of life and when water is human Chapter 3: Resource or Source: How to Approach Water in the Time of Climate Change Part Two Chapter 4: Introduction to Part Two Chapter 5: The Giriama in Kenya: Living with Drought Water practices: rain, roofs, rivers and water basins Headcarrying: water shaping gendered bodies Giriama conceptions of water Fu ha mwenga: fluidity and identity Watery identities Identity solutions: blending place, power and water MaKaya: home from home Giriama waters and authenticity: understanding the materiality of water Chapter 6: Lanjaron, Spain Slow water: glaciers, ice and snow The Moorish influence: hydrologers Invisible waters Not all waters are equal Mineral water: healing and destruction Change: festivities and water The ritual Chapter 7: Welsh Water: The Resourcefulness of Water Establishing Welsh water: then and now The language of water Discourses of deluge Water relationships, powers and control Memories of floods and flooding Water and memory: remember Tryweryn Yma o hyd (Still here) Chapter 8: Concluding Remarks References Index
