Proposing a series of innovative steps towards better understanding human lives at the interstices of water and land, this volume includes eight ethnographies from deltas around the world. The book presents ‘delta life’ with intimate descriptions of the predicaments, imaginations and activities of delta inhabitants. Conceptually, the collection develops ‘delta life’ as a metaphor for approaching continual and intersecting sociocultural, economic and material transformations more widely. The book revolves around questions of hydrosociality, volatility, rhythms and scale. It thereby yields insights into people’s lives that conventional, hydrological approaches to deltas cannot provide.
Table of Content
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Life at Water’s Edge
Franz Krause and Mark Harris
Chapter 1. Displacing the Delta: Notes on the Anthropology of the Earth’s Physical Features
Tanya Richardson
Chapter 2. The Global Swamp. Or, the Amphibious as a Figure of Heterotopia
Lukas Ley
Chapter 3. Stagnation: Waterflows and the Politics of Stranded Matter in La Mojana, Colombia
Alejandro Camargo
Chapter 4. Economy, Identity and Hydrology: Toward a Holistic Approach to Intersecting Volatilities in the Mackenzie Delta, Canada
Franz Krause
Chapter 5. ‘This Tide Will Be a Good Tide’: On Movement, Anticipative Waiting and Tricking on the Islands of the Parnaíba Delta, Brazil
Nora Horisberger
Chapter 6. Gleaning Time: Practice, Pause and Anticipation in the Sine-Saloum Delta, Senegal
Sandro Simon
Chapter 7. Lived Histories of Flows and Sediments in a Turkish Delta
Catarina Scaramelli
Chapter 8. Available, Yet Unavailable: Anchoring Land in the Ayeyarwady Delta, Myanmar
Benoit Ivars
Conclusion: Confluences and Distributaries in Delta Life
Franz Krause and Mark Harris
Index
About the author
Mark Harris is Professor of Historical Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, UK. His wider interests include ethnohistory; environmental anthropology; knowledge in and methodology of the social sciences and the practice of teaching and learning.
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