Description
Book SynopsisFacing droughts, floods, and water security challenges, society is increasingly forced to develop new policies and practices to cope with the impacts of climate change. From taken-for-granted values and perceptions to embodied, existential modes of engaging our world, human perspectives impact decision-making and behaviour.
The Wonder of Water explores how human experience including our cultural paradigms, value systems, and personal biases impacts decisions around water. In many ways, the volume expands on the growing field of water ethics to include questions around environmental aesthetics, psychology, and ontology. And yet this book is not simply for philosophers. On the contrary, a specific aim is to explore how more informed philosophical dialogue will lead to more insightful public policies and practices.
Case studies describe specific architectural and planning decisions, fisheries policies, urban ecological restorations, and more. The overarching
Trade Review
"It is no accident that The Wonder of Water starts and ends with poetry. While it is an academic and rigorous compilation, most of its contributors infuse their prose with expressive admiration of water’s foundational and life-affirming properties in a way that’s wonder inducing indeed." -- Rachel Jagareski * Foreword Reviews, January/February 2020 *
"The twelve chapters of The Wonder of Water pin-point Stefanovic’s ethical and moral concerns in relation to water, the landscapes of water, and places associated with water, whether river, bay, sea, or otherwise. As editor, her aim is to incorporate thinking that highlights ‘the genuine meaning of water in its visceral quality, its vitality and its primordiality.’" * Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology *
Table of Contents
List of Figures Acknowledgments Introduction Ingrid Leman Stefanovic Part One: The Lived Experience of Water Rain Queen Kirby Manià, Simon Fraser University 1. Water Gaia: Toward a Scientific Phenomenology of Water Stephan Harding, Schumacher College 2. Flow Motions and Kinethic Responsiveness Stephen J. Smith, Simon Fraser University 3. Creaturely Migrations on a Breathing Planet David Abram, Author and Cultural Ecologist 4. When Salmon Are Deemed Superfluous: Reflecting on a Struggle of Stories Martin Lee Mueller, Rudolf Steiner University College, Oslo Part Two: Water and Place 5. The Place of Water Janet Donohoe, University of West Georgia 6. Engaging the Water Monster of Amsterdam: Meandering Toward a Fair Urban Riversphere Irene Klaver, University of North Texas 7. Water and the City: Towards an Ethos of Fluid Urbanism Ingrid Leman Stefanovic, Simon Fraser University 8. What We’re Talking about When We’re Talking about Water: Race, Imperial Politics, and Ruination in Flint, Michigan Sarah King, Grand Rapids University Part Three: Rethinking Water Policy, Practice, and Ethics 9. The Bonding Properties of Water: Community, Urban River Restoration, and Non-human Agency Bryan Bannon, Merrimack College 10. Standing Rock: Water Protectors in a Time of Failed Policy Trish Glazebrook, Washington State University and Jeff Gessas, University of North Texas 11. Phenomenology, Water Policy, and the Conception of the Polis Henry Dicks, Université Jean Moulin, France 12. Towards a Complexity Ethics: Understanding and Action on Behalf of Life-World Well-Being Robert Mugerauer, University of Washington Part Four: Closing Reflections Conclusion: Looking Forward: From Poetics to Praxis Ingrid Leman Stefanovic, Simon Fraser University The Lure of Water: Four Poems Dilys Leman, Toronto List of Contributors Index
