Water Culture And Power

Download or read book Water, Culture, and Power written by John M. Donahue and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a series of case studies from around the world that examine the complex culture and power dimensions of water resources and management. Chapters describe highly contentious cases that span the continuum of concerns from dam construction and hydroelectric power generation to water quality and potable water systems. They address the values and meanings associated with water and how changes in power result in changes both in meaning and in patterns of use, access, and control.

Download or read book Water, Power and Identity written by Rutgerd Boelens and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 450 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses two major issues in natural resource management and political ecology: the complex conflicting relationship between communities managing water on the ground and national/global policy-making institutions and elites; and how grassroots defend against encroachment, question the self-evidence of State-/market-based water governance, and confront coercive and participatory boundary policing (‘normal’ vs. ‘abnormal’). The book examines grassroots building of multi-layered water-rights territories, and State, market and expert networks’ vigorous efforts to reshape these water societies in their own image – seizing resources and/or aligning users, identities and rights systems within dominant frameworks. Distributive and cultural politics entwine. It is shown that attempts to modernize and normalize users through universalized water culture, ‘rational water use’ and de-politicized interventions deepen water security problems rather than alleviating them. However, social struggles negotiate and enforce water rights. User collectives challenge imposed water rights and identities, constructing new ones to strategically acquire water control autonomy and re-moralize their waterscapes. The author shows that battles for material control include the right to culturally define and politically organize water rights and territories. Andean illustrations from Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia and Chile, from peasant-indigenous life stories to international policy-making, highlight open and subsurface hydro-social networks. They reveal how water justice struggles are political projects against indifference, and that engaging in re-distributive policies and defying ‘truth politics,’ extends context-particular water rights definitions and governance forms.

Download or read book Water Culture in Roman Society written by Dylan Kelby Rogers and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-07-17 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water played an important part of ancient Roman life, from providing necessary drinking water, supplying bath complexes, to flowing in large-scale public fountains. The Roman culture of water was seen throughout the Roman Empire, although it was certainly not monolithic and it could come in a variety of scales and forms, based on climatic and social conditions of different areas. This article seeks to define ‘water culture’ in Roman society by examining literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence, while understanding modern trends in scholarship related to the study of Roman water. The culture of water can be demonstrated through expressions of power, aesthetics, and spectacle. Further there was a shared experience of water in the empire that could be expressed through religion, landscape, and water’s role in cultures of consumption and pleasure.

Download or read book Water written by Veronica Strang and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As any scientist will tell you, there is no substance more vital than water. Our history is necessarily a history with water, whether we have irrigated our fields with it, cooled our machines, washed ourselves, drank it down deeply, or even worshipped it. In Water, Veronic Strang ladles through the rich history of our interaction with water, offering an accessible examination of the crucial properties that make water so unique alongside the complex story of our evolving relationship with it. As Strang shows, our attitudes about water and the things that we rely on it for have changed dramatically over time. Once a mystical source of regenerative powers, it has since played various roles as our attitudes about hygiene, health, and disease have developed; as it has become useful to our industry; as agriculture has become ever more complex; and, of course, as we have learned to make money from it. Today water—who controls it, and how—is one of the largest issues facing our society, influencing everything from the welfare of the billions of people living on earth to the vitality of its natural habitats. Balancing history, science, and environmental and cultural studies, Strang offers an important, multi-faceted view of a critical resource.

Download or read book Undercurrents of Power written by Kevin Dawson and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2021-05-07 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kevin Dawson considers how enslaved Africans carried aquatic skills—swimming, diving, boat making, even surfing—to the Americas. Undercurrents of Power not only chronicles the experiences of enslaved maritime workers, but also traverses the waters of the Atlantic repeatedly to trace and untangle cultural and social traditions.

Download or read book Fountains and Water Culture in Byzantium written by Brooke Shilling and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-13 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection explores the ancient fountains of Byzantium, Constantinople and Istanbul, reviving the senses of past water cultures.

Download or read book Water, Cultural Diversity, and Global Environmental Change written by Barbara Rose Johnston and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-12-07 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Co-published with UNESCO A product of the UNESCO-IHP project on Water and Cultural Diversity, this book represents an effort to examine the complex role water plays as a force in sustaining, maintaining, and threatening the viability of culturally diverse peoples. It is argued that water is a fundamental human need, a human right, and a core sustaining element in biodiversity and cultural diversity. The core concepts utilized in this book draw upon a larger trend in sustainability science, a recognition of the synergism and analytical potential in utilizing a coupled biological and social systems analysis, as the functioning viability of nature is both sustained and threatened by humans.