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About the Book
Every water issue is a social issue. And yet, in contrast to almost every other culture, we define water in the modern West as a substance entirely devoid of social content. How is it that we have come to think of water in this way, as an abstract compound of hydrogen and oxygen, and what are the consequences?
These questions underlie Jamie Linton’s What is Water?, a history of the particular way of conceptualizing water that predominated in the twentieth century. In this wide-ranging study, Linton shows how scientific practice, the modern state, technology, and politics produced an idea of water that helped permit its manipulation and control on a vast scale, with corresponding effects on human society. That much of the world is engulfed today in what many describe as a "water crisis" suggests the need to rethink the nature of water. By reinvesting water with social content -- by considering water’s social nature -- Linton suggests a fresh approach to a fundamental problem.
About the Author(s)
Jamie Linton is a SSHRC postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Geography at Queen’s University.
Table of Contents
Illustrations
Foreword / 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 State
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
Reviews
"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, Department of Geography, University of London
"Beginning a book as Jamie Linton does this one, with the claim that "water is what we make of it," is an act of provocation ... Just as a stone thrown into a lake spreads ripples outward across its surface, so Linton's provocation sends intellectual shock waves hammering into pervasive ways of understanding and defining water, invites reflection on the ways in which people have thought about water in the past, and heightens awareness of the consequences that will flow from what we make of water in the future."
-- from the Foreword by Graeme Wynn
Sample Chapter
Front Matter and Chapter One
Related Topics
Environmental Studies
History
Philosophy
Other Ways To Order
In Canada, order your copy of What Is Water? from UTP Distribution at:
UTP Distribution
5201 Dufferin Street
Toronto, Ontario
M3H 5T8
Phone orders: 1(800)565-9523 or (416)667-7791
Fax orders: 1(800)221-9985 or (416)667-7832
Email: utpbooks@utpress.utoronto.ca
Ordering information for customers outside Canada
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