Signs of Water: Community Perspectives on Water, Responsibility, and Hope

A global exploration of water, bringing together academics and experts from five continents to illuminate the many issues facing the world’s most important resource.

Water is more important than ever before. It is increasingly controversial in direct proportion to its scarcity, demand, neglect, and commodification. There is no place on the planet where water is not, or will not be, of critical concern.

Signs of Water brings together scholars and experts from five continents in an interdisciplinary exploration of the theoretical approaches, social and political issues, and anthropogenic hazards surrounding water in the twenty-first century. From the kitchen taps of Detroit, Michigan to the water-harvesting infrastructure of Tokyo, from the Upper Xingu Basin of Brazil to the Sunda Deep of the Java Trench, these essays flow through time and place to uncover the many issues surrounding water today.

Asking key theoretical questions, exposing threats to vital water systems, and proposing paths forward, Signs of Water brims with histories, ontologies, and political struggles. Bringing together local experiences to tell a global story, it centers water as history, as politics, and as a human right.

With Contributions By Barbara Amos, Henry Bikwibili Tantoh, Bill Bunn, Maria Elisa de Paula Eduardo Garavello, Denise L. Di Santo, Anna Frank, Andrea Garcia, C.R. Grimmer, Shirley Hardman, Richard Harrison, Sonya Jakubec , Michaela Keck, Marcella LaFever, Julie Laplante, Ju-Pong Lin, Sharon Meier MacDonald, Arivalagan Murugesha Pandian, Devora Neumark, Fernanda Viegas Reichardt, and Reg Whiten

Robert Boschman is Professor of American Literature and the Environmental Humanities at Mount Royal University, where he chairs the Department of English, Languages, and Cultures.

Sonya Jakubec is a Registered Nurse and Professor in the School of Nursing and Midwifery at Mount Royal University, where she teaches and researches community mental health and the health-environment connection.

Foreword
Robert Sandford, Global Water Futures Chair, Water & Climate Security Institute for Water, Environment and Health, United Nations University
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Robert Boschman and Sonya Jakubec

I. Immersions: From Water Imaginaries to Wild Swimming

Introduction
Robert Boschman and Sonya Jakubec

1 Water Imagination in Anthropology: On Plant Healing Matters
Julie Laplante

2 Aquatic Insights from Roger Deakin’s Waterlog
Michaela Keck

II. Formations: Water as LifeBlood

Introduction
Robert Boschman and Sonya Jakubec

3 Water Formations, Water Neutrality, and Water Shutoffs: Posthumanism in the Wake of Racial Slavery
C.R. Grimmer

4 When Water Isn’t Life: Environmental Justice Denied
Denise L. Di Santo

5 Indigenous Stories and the Fraser River: Intercultural Dialogue for Public Decision-Making
Marcella LaFever, Shirley Hardman, and Pearl Penner

III. Histories: On Four Continents

Introduction
Robert Boschman and Sonya Jakubec

6 Unexpected Connections? Water Security, Law, Social Inequality, Disrespect for Cultural Diversity, and Environmental Degradation in the Upper Xingu Basin
Fernanda Viegas Reichardt, Andrea Garcia, and Maria Elisa de Paula Eduardo Garavello

7 Community-Based Natural Resources Management in Sub-Saharan Africa: Barriers to Sustainable Community Water Supply Management in Northwest Cameroon
Henry Bikiwibili Tantoh

8 Taming the Tambraparni River: Reservoirs, Hydro-Electric Power Generation, and Raising Fish in South India
Arivalagan Murugeshapandian

9 A Tale of Two Watersheds in the Mackenzie River Basin: Linking Land Use Planning to the Hydroscape
Reg Whiten

IV. Interventions: Thinking and Being with Water

Introduction
Robert Boschman and Sonya Jakubec

10 On Not Having Invented the Wheel: A Meditation on Invention, Land, and Water
Richard Harrison

11 Instructions for Being Water: A Performance Score
JuPong Lin and Devora Neumark, in collaboration with Seitu Jones

12 The Red Alert Project
Barbara Amos

V. Responses: Two Canadian Community Models

Introduction
Robert Boschman and Sonya Jakubec

13 Ghost Story: A Community Organizing Model of Changemaking
Sharon Meier MacDonald

14 The New Thunderbirds: The Waters of Uranium City, Saskatchewan
Bill Bunn and Robert Boschman

VI. Implementation: An Engineering Application for Global Climate Change

Introduction
Robert Boschman and Sonya Jakubec

15 Large-Scale Water Harvesting: An Application Model in the Time of Accelerating Global Climate Change
Anna Frank

Contributors

From many stories and communities in this amazing collection, comes a universal truth: water is sacred and we separate ourselves from it at our peril. Protecting watersheds and the rights of local communities and Indigenous people who dwell on them will lead us to a water-secure future and a more equitable and just society. A wonderful book, ultimately filled with hope, as it weaves together the strands of the path ahead.

—Maude Barlow, author and activist