Island Rivers
Fresh Water and Place in Oceania
(Australian National University Press, 2018)
SCI 247
Anthropologists have written a great deal about the coastal adaptations and seafaring traditions of Pacific Islanders but have had much less to say about the significance of rivers for Pacific island culture, livelihood and identity. The authors of this collection seek to fill that gap in the ethnographic record by drawing attention to the deep historical attachments of island communities to rivers, and the ways in which those attachments are changing in response to various forms of economic development and social change. In addition to making a unique contribution to Pacific island ethnography, the authors of this volume speak to a global set of issues of immense importance to a world in which water scarcity, conflict, pollution and the degradation of riparian environments afflict growing numbers of people. Several authors take a political ecology approach to their topic, but the emphasis here is less on hydro-politics than on the cultural meaning of rivers to the communities we describe. How has the cultural significance of rivers shifted as a result of colonization, development and nation-building? How do people whose identities are fundamentally rooted in their relationship to a particular river renegotiate that relationship when the river is dammed to generate hydro-power or polluted by mining activities? How do blockages in the flow of rivers and underground springs interrupt the intergenerational transmission of local ecological knowledge and hence the ability of local communities to construct collective identities rooted in a sense of place?
(Description Source: Australian National University Press)
Editors
John R. Wagner is an associate professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. He conducts research on human/water relations in the Okanagan Valley, the Columbia River Basin in Canada and the United States, and in Papua New Guinea. His current Papua New Guinea project, undertaken in collaboration with the Kala Language Committee and other university researchers and students, is focused on documenting the Kala language through a study of their aquatic environment. In his Columbia River Basin research, John focuses on water governance and the relationship of the Columbia River Treaty to irrigation, food security and food sovereignty. In the Okanagan Valley, he is working on the Water Ways Project in collaboration with other university researchers and community organizations to develop a museum exhibition that will bring together Indigenous Syilx knowledge and western scientific knowledge, in support of wiser water stewardship, decolonization and reconciliation.
Jerry K. Jacka is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
UBC Library Holdings
How to Purchase this Book
From the Publisher – Australian National University Press
From Used-book Sellers – ABE, Amazon, Antiqbook, Biblio, Vialibri
Print ISBN: 9781760462161
Online ISBN: 9781760462178
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