The Anthropology of Water

Ballestero, Andrea

doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011428

Cited by 68 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 116 publications

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“…Clark et al, 2017; Linton, 2014; Schmidt, 2014; Swyngedouw, 2009). Our framing of the timescapes of Himalayan hydropower also articulates with recent scholarship focused on the contested futurities of water and/or the anticipatory politics of modeling watery horizons of (in)sufficiency (Ballestero, 2019; Randle & Barnes, 2018).…”

Section: Water Timescapes and Himalayan Hydropowermentioning

confidence: 99%

Timescapes of Himalayan hydropower: Promises, project life cycles, and precarities

2020

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In this paper, we review the existing social science scholarship focused on hydropower development in the Himalayan region, using an interpretive lens attuned to issues of time and temporality. While the spatial politics of Himalayan hydropower are well examined in the literature, an explicit examination of temporal politics is lacking. In this paper, we present a conceptual framework organized around the heuristic of timescapes, highlighting temporal themes implicit in the existing literature. In three sections, we explore the temporal politics of anticipation that shape hydropower dreams, the intersecting temporalities and rhythms that modulate the life cycles of hydropower projects, and the ways that geological and hydrological time affect both hydropower development and broader Himalayan futures. Along the way, we pose a series of questions useful for framing future research given the significant climatic, geophysical, and sociopolitical changes underway in the Himalayan bioregion, calling for greater analytical attention to time, temporality, and temporal ethics in future studies of hydropower in the Himalayas and beyond.

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Section: Water Timescapes and Himalayan Hydropowermentioning

confidence: 99%

Timescapes of Himalayan hydropower: Promises, project life cycles, and precarities

2020

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“…Following Ballestero's (2019, 416) suggestion that what is missing from our “anthropology of water” accounts is “joy and pleasures that coexist with the damaging practices we document,” in this article, I describe the soothing, creative, joyful, and productive, but sometimes also violent and destructive, effects the Una River has had on humans in Bihać during the Bosnian War. I detail how the “war swimmers” (re)learned that they were situated and “knotted beings” (Haraway 2008), powerfully attached to and constituted by the river.…”

Section: Theoretical Inspirationsmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Within this broader literature on sociality beyond the human, scholars researching waterscapes document how water is always a historically and culturally specific matter (Ballestero 2019). Some of this “anthropology of water” literature, following the ontological turn, also works to de‐center nature/culture distinctions (Hastrup and Hastrup 2015), and it builds on the ideas of more‐than‐human relationality to argue “water is a relative with whom we engage in social and political interdependency and respect” (Yazzie and Baldy 2018, 3).…”

Section: Theoretical Inspirationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life in an age of death: War and the river in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Hromadžić

2022

American Anthropologist

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The majority of literature on wars understandably focuses on the horrific aspects of war, such as death, destruction, displacement, and trauma. In this article, however, I want to highlight that life in war is not only brutal and disastrous but also is in some respects deeply joyful and at times even fun. This requires that we portray the horrific experiences of death and destruction but that we also ask: What kind of life emerges in these injured landscapes? Guided by this question, I argue that we cannot understand what war looks like and feels like if we do not understand the relationship between humans and other than humans. More specifically, I show how during the Bosnian War, in the devastated city of ruins, Bihać, shared experiences of joy, fun, and togetherness (communitas) materialized between the town's people and the Una River. Swimming in the river together provided the people of Bihać with an opportunity to create moments of play and laughter between life and death. As people in Bihać explained, these were moment‐by‐moment living situations, where generations blended and where divisions, superiority, and pride were broken down, however temporarily, and new undifferentiated bonds among people were created—communitas.

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“…On the other hand, researchers who mobilize an embedded economic approach in water research take more hydro social views of water (Linton & Budds, 2014) and investigate the activities, social relationships, cultural values, and political processes that mediate human–water relations (Ballestero, 2019b; Orlove & Caton, 2010; Wutich & Beresford, 2019). Importantly, an embedded economic approach does not assume a priori that people conceptualize or understand water in any specific or consistent ways.…”

Section: What Are the Major Differences Between Conventional Economicmentioning

confidence: 99%

The embedded economics of water: Insights from economic anthropology

Beresford

2020

WIREs Water

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Over the past two decades, scholars and policy makers have promoted the idea that water can be analyzed and managed according to the principles of economics. Yet, many policy prescriptions based on economic principles have struggled to deliver the results they intend. As such, scholars note the need for alternative approaches to understanding water economies, and many propose that embedded economic perspectives are able to give more holistic and locally grounded insights. In this article, I explain the embedded economic perspective, how it is different from a conventional economic perspective, and how the embedded economics of water makes important contributions to understanding water economies more broadly. I highlight three key areas of embedded economic insight on water derived from recent scholarship in economic anthropology: human meanings and values for water, nonmarket water exchanges, and diverse water economies. I conclude by discussing implications these insights have for interdisciplinary water scholarship. This article is categorized under: Human Water > Value of Water Human Water > Rights to Water Human Water > Methods

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The Anthropology of Water

Cited by 68 publications

References 116 publications

Timescapes of Himalayan hydropower: Promises, project life cycles, and precarities

Timescapes of Himalayan hydropower: Promises, project life cycles, and precarities

Life in an age of death: War and the river in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The embedded economics of water: Insights from economic anthropology

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