Towards an Amphibious Anthropology of Delta Life

Krause, Franz

doi:10.1007/s10745-017-9902-9

Cited by 56 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…We notably mobilize useful concepts and insights from Franz Krause and Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt for our approach. Krause (2017a) proposes an 'amphibious anthropology' to adequately account for lives in deltas. This approach encompasses concepts of wetness (recognizing the spectrum of realities between dry and wet, and their local importance), volatility (instability and fluidity of humans and non-humans' interactions) and rhythms (analysis of clashing and/or corresponding ecological and social interrelated rhythms).…”

Section: Looking At Sedimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Building on these works, we propose to more fully incorporate sediment in hydrosocial analysis, drawing on a body of recent, critical literature that emerged in anthropology and geography dedicated to muddy terrains , or those places where sediments, rivers, and societies intersect (Cortesi and Carmago, forthcoming; Krause, 2017a; Lahiri-Dutt, 2014). We notably mobilize useful concepts and insights from Franz Krause and Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt for our approach.…”

Section: Confronting the Hydrosocial Literature With River Sedimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, lives and livelihoods connected to sediments remain often both officially and academically under-explored. However, in geography and anthropology, theoretical and empirical explorations of lives in shifting land(water)scapes like meandering rivers (Abizaid, 2005; Coomes et al., 2009), temporary river islands (Lahiri-Dutt, 2014; Lahiri-Dutt and Samanta, 2013) or in deltas (Krause, 2017a, 2017b; Sultana, 2010) increasingly document the role of sediments in the forms and dynamics of river-society interactions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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When hydrosociality encounters sediments: Transformed lives and livelihoods in the lower basin of the Ganges River

Micheaux

Mukherjee

Kull

2018

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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The hydrosocial cycle is a central analytical framework in political ecological approaches to water. It helps foreground multiple and subtle interactions between water and society, culture and politics. However, to date it has dealt little with matters other than water flows. In river contexts, biotic and abiotic components play critical roles in the way people engage with and make a living out of rivers, beyond water. This article aims to advance the hydrosocial framework with a deeper consideration of the materiality of rivers. To initiate this approach, the focus is here on sediments. Lives and livelihoods connected to river sediments remain both officially and academically under-explored. This certainly applies to the context of the Lower Ganges basin whose active channels transport huge loads of sediments mainly originating from the Himalayan slopes. Building upon an environmental history perspective and drawing on three spatially nested cases in West Bengal, India, the paper analyses instances of water-sedimentsociety interactions. The general case study presents colonial state interventions in the Lower Ganges basin waterscapes. The second case study zooms the focus on the 2-km long Farakka Barrage. These explorations reveal how an 'imported' conceptual landwater divide infused those interventions that led to unforeseen effects on riverine lives and livelihoods. Focusing on Hamidpur char, situated few kilometres upstream of the barrage, the third case study recounts the contemporary efforts of local communities to obtain revision of administrative decisions unable to deal with 'muddyscapes'. Finally, the paper engages with recent debates on the concept of hybridity in land-water nexus to reflect on the specific meaning and role of sediments.

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Section: Looking At Sedimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Confronting the Hydrosocial Literature With River Sedimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

When hydrosociality encounters sediments: Transformed lives and livelihoods in the lower basin of the Ganges River

Micheaux

Mukherjee

Kull

2018

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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“…Especially in the first two studies Carse shows how any thorough understanding of the Panama Canal depends on both a land and water(way) perspective. Also relevant, in light of the land-bias, is the work done on deltas (Morita 2016;Krause 2017) that aims to be explicitly amphibious (cf. McLean 2011).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Follow the action: understanding the conflicting temporalities of ships, river, authorities and family through distributed ethnography

Boersma

2020

Mobilities

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This article analyses the interplay between movement and stasis on Western European inland waterways by looking at four different orderings: navigational, regulatory, market, and intimate. These orderings are ongoing situated practices, which actors carry out in distributed sociomaterial assemblages. This was investigated through ethnographic fieldwork that was not only mobile, but also distributed across sites, both on land and the water. When following different actors, the key is to follow the action through which they are connected. Mobilising and immobilising ships is also achieved from land by control room operators, cargo brokers, family members and non-human actors like radar networks, geolocative AIS apps, and water level databases. It became clear that often actors need to give market orderings priority and rearrange their position in other orderings accordingly, which results in palpable pressure, manifested in different problems that all concern time. Skippers take risks to be just in time, to find resting time and to mediate asynchronous rhythms of loved ones on land, all the while maintaining critical spatio-temporal separation with riverbed, embankment and other ships. Media play an important role in the assemblages: they keep separate what would otherwise collide and connect to deal with separation.

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“…If amphibious anthropology can serve as a framework for socialist and post-socialist transformation of delta life in Vilkovo by displacing the terracentrism of administrative and modern habits of thought, Vilkovchani's experiences of siltation and terrestrialization can be instructive in mapping an amphibious anthropology. There is a renewed interest in human habitation of deltas and wetlands because of the insights they provide into how to live with frequent inundation-that is, how to live with water-in conditions of climate change (Krause 2017;Krause 2018;Morita and Jensen 2017). But Vilkovchani remind us that 'the amphibious' should not be equated only with water and its flow.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Terrestrialization of Amphibious Life in a Danube Delta 'Town on Water'

Richardson

2019

Suomen Antropologi

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The Danube Delta town of Vilkovo is often called the ‘Ukrainian Venice’ because of its 40 kilometers of canals. Many of these canals, however, are rapidly filling in with silt and are often impassible by boat. Tourism entrepreneurs and town administrators have begun lobbying for funding for a large-scale canal restoration project and for the town’s designation as a heritage site. Their tourism-development narratives, however, often overlook or simplify a complex set of social and environmental factors that have shaped residents’ past and present relationships with the Danube River. This article counters this tendency by providing an ethnographic portrait of terrestrialization—a term I use to name the confluence of geomorphological, ecological and social change in Vilkovo—that draws on townspeople’s descriptions of their dwelling practices. It combines insights from amphibious anthropology and social science literature on water infrastructure in order to pinpoint issues that need to be addressed in developing the town’s tourist economy, and makes the case for including studies of terrestrialization as part of an amphibious anthropology.

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Towards an Amphibious Anthropology of Delta Life

Cited by 56 publications

References 28 publications

When hydrosociality encounters sediments: Transformed lives and livelihoods in the lower basin of the Ganges River

When hydrosociality encounters sediments: Transformed lives and livelihoods in the lower basin of the Ganges River

Follow the action: understanding the conflicting temporalities of ships, river, authorities and family through distributed ethnography

The Terrestrialization of Amphibious Life in a Danube Delta 'Town on Water'

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