Delta Life: Exploring Dynamic Environments where Rivers Meet the Sea(28 Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology)

Proposing a series of innovative steps towards better understanding human lives at the interstices of water and land, this volume includes eight ethnographies from deltas around the world. The book presents ‘delta life’ with intimate descriptions of the predicaments, imaginations and activities of delta inhabitants. Conceptually, the collection develops ‘delta life’ as a metaphor for approaching continual and intersecting sociocultural, economic and material transformations more widely. The book revolves around questions of hydrosociality, volatility, rhythms and scale. It thereby yields insights into people’s lives that conventional, hydrological approaches to deltas cannot provide.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures Acknowledgements Introduction: Life at Water’s Edge Franz Krause and Mark Harris Chapter 1. Displacing the Delta: Notes on the Anthropology of the Earth’s Physical Features Tanya Richardson Chapter 2. The Global Swamp. Or, the Amphibious as a Figure of Heterotopia Lukas Ley Chapter 3. Stagnation: Waterflows and the Politics of Stranded Matter in La Mojana, Colombia Alejandro Camargo Chapter 4. Economy, Identity and Hydrology: Toward a Holistic Approach to Intersecting Volatilities in the Mackenzie Delta, Canada Franz Krause Chapter 5. ‘This Tide Will Be a Good Tide’: On Movement, Anticipative Waiting and Tricking on the Islands of the Parnaíba Delta, Brazil Nora Horisberger Chapter 6. Gleaning Time: Practice, Pause and Anticipation in the Sine-Saloum Delta, Senegal Sandro Simon Chapter 7. Lived Histories of Flows and Sediments in a Turkish Delta Catarina Scaramelli Chapter 8. Available, Yet Unavailable: Anchoring Land in the Ayeyarwady Delta, Myanmar Benoit Ivars Conclusion: Confluences and Distributaries in Delta Life Franz Krause and Mark Harris Index

About the Author :
Franz Krause is an anthropologist interested in the role of water in society and culture. He works as Junior Research Group Leader of the DELTA project at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany.

Review :
“This volume does more than assemble ethnographic studies of delta inhabitants from around the world. It weaves their experience into a sustained reflection on life in a volatile world of islands, reedbeds, coasts and swamps, a world ever made, unmade and remade, as much by spirits as by people, and as much by states and markets as by the elements of air, earth and water. Here, the lens of the delta affords rare insight into what it means to live downstream.” • Tim Ingold, University of Aberdeen “Starting from the dynamic instability of river deltas as volatile biosocial entities, the contributors to this pioneering volume jolt us to rethink our ideas about coastal edges and the beings, matter, and practices through which they form and persist.” • Hugh Raffles, The New School “This is an original book that offers a variety of approaches to conceptualizing, empirically studying, and theorizing deltas as distinct sites of socio-material relations. The authors offer contrasting and complementing approaches that make the volume a useful introduction to the theme.” • Andrea Ballestero, Rice University “I think that the book is excellent and will make an important contribution to debates in the field.” • Jason Cons, University of Texas at Austin