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What Is Water?: The History of a Modern Abstraction
Abstract
We all know what water is, and we often take it for granted. Because it seems so natural, we seldom question how we see water. 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 the modern concept of water, that water can be stripped of its wider environmental, social, and cultural contexts and reduced to a scientific abstraction – to mere H 2 0. This abstraction has given modern society licence to dam, divert, and manipulate water with impunity, giving rise to a growing suite of problems. Linton argues that part of the solution to the water crisis involves deliberately reinvesting water with social content.
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Cited by
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Wilson, N. J., Montoya, T., Arseneault, R., & Curley, A. (2021) · Water International · doi:10.1080/02508060.2021.1928972 · Cited by 107
Waterscapes and hydrosocial territories: Thinking space in political ecologies of water
Flaminio, S., Rouillé-Kielo, G., & Le Visage, S. (2022) · Progress in Environmental Geography · doi:10.1177/27539687221106796 · Cited by 72
Lithium and water: Hydrosocial impacts across the life cycle of energy storage
Blair, J. J. A., Vineyard, N., Mulvaney, D., Cantor, A., Sharbat, A., Berry, K., Bartholomew, E., & Ornelas, A. F. (2024) · WIREs Water · doi:10.1002/wat2.1748 · Cited by 38
Space, Time, and Hydrosocial Imaginaries: Water Quality Governance of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe
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Metadata
- Authors
- Linton, J., & wynn, G.
- Venue
- University of British Columbia Press eBooks
- Publisher
- University of British Columbia Press
- Published
- 2010-07-01
- OpenAlex
- W4385736588
- Cited by
- 555
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 19.00
- Type
- book
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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