What Is Water?: The History of a Modern Abstraction (Nature | History | Society) - Hardcover

Linton, Jamie

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0774817011 ISBN 13: 9780774817011

Publisher: UBC Press, 2010

Synopsis

We all know what water is, and we often take it for granted. But the spectre of a worldwide water crisis suggests that there might be something fundamentally wrong with the way we think about water. Jamie Linton dives into the history of water as an abstract concept, stripped of its environmental, social, and cultural contexts. Reduced to a scientific abstraction – to mere H20 – this concept has given modern society licence to dam, divert, and manipulate water with apparent impunity. Part of the solution to the water crisis involves reinvesting water with social content, thus altering the way we see water. An original take on a deceptively complex issue, What Is Water? offers a fresh approach to a fundamental problem.

About this title

Review:

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. Author: Alex Loftus, Department of Geography, University of London

From the Author:

Jamie Linton is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography at Queen’s University.

About this edition

• Publisher: UBC Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0774817011
• ISBN 13: 9780774817011
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352