Description
Book SynopsisA history of the modern concept of water that traces how a scientific abstraction has helped to produce a global crisis.
Trade ReviewThe publication of Jamie Linton’s superb monograph,
What is Water?, provides an opportunity to consider the development of relational and dialectical thought within geography and especially how this has developed around the subject of water. -- Alex Loftus, Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London * The Geographical Journal *
Linton’s message needs to be taken seriously by anyone for whom water is something more than so many molecules of H2O … it is a message that should be incorporated into both introductory and advanced courses in a number of disciplines dealing not only with water but with all natural resources.
-- David B. Brooks, Fresh Water, Friends of the Earth, Canada * Critical Policy Studies, Vol. 4, No. 4 *
Linton presents the issues in impressive breadth and depth, and tells a compelling story. Recommended.
-- Choice * I.D. Sasowsky, University of Akron *
Jamie Linton’s excellent analysis fills a gap in the understanding of our conceptions of water. His critiques of the water crisis and the new paradigm of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) are simply brilliant and long overdue. The book is easy to read for an audience new to the literature on water from a social science perspective. -- Olivier Graefe, University of Fribourg * Social & Cultural Geography *
Table of ContentsForeword: Making Waves / Graeme Wynn
Preface
Part 1: Introduction
1 Fixing the Flow: The Things We Make of Water
2 Relational Dialectics: Putting Things in Fluid Terms
Part 2: The History of Modern Water
3 Intimations of Modern Water
4 From Premodern Waters to Modern Water
5 The Hydrologic Cycle(s): Scientific and Sacred
6 The Hortonian Hydrologic Cycle
7 Reading the Resource: Modern Water, the Hydrologic Cycle, and the Stat
8 Culmination: Global Water
Part 3: The Constitutional Crisis of Modern Water
9 The Constitution of Modern Water
10 Modern Water in Crisis
11 Sustaining Modern Water: The New “Global Water Regime”
Part 4: Conclusion: What Becomes of Water
12 Hydrolectics
Notes
Bibliography
Index
