Regular price £21.56 GBP
Regular price Sale price £21.56 GBP
Sale Sold out
Free UK Shipping

Freshly Printed - allow 7 days lead

The Wonder of Water
Lived Experience, Policy, and Practice

Ingrid Leman Stefanovic (Edited by)

9781487524036

Paperback / softback, published 13 December 2019

280 pages, 5 figures
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.44 kg

"It is no accident that The Wonder of Water starts and ends with poetry. While it is an academic and rigorous compilation, most of its contributors infuse their prose with expressive admiration of water’s foundational and life-affirming properties in a way that’s wonder inducing indeed."

- Rachel Jagareski (Foreword Reviews, January/February 2020)

"The twelve chapters of The Wonder of Water pin-point Stefanovic’s ethical and moral concerns in relation to water, the landscapes of water, and places associated with water, whether river, bay, sea, or otherwise. As editor, her aim is to incorporate thinking that highlights ‘the genuine meaning of water in its visceral quality, its vitality and its primordiality.’"

- Environmental & Architectural Phenomenology

Facing droughts, floods, and water security challenges, society is increasingly forced to develop new policies and practices to cope with the impacts of climate change. From taken-for-granted values and perceptions to embodied, existential modes of engaging our world, human perspectives impact decision-making and behaviour.

The Wonder of Water explores how human experience – including our cultural paradigms, value systems, and personal biases – impacts decisions around water. In many ways, the volume expands on the growing field of water ethics to include questions around environmental aesthetics, psychology, and ontology. And yet this book is not simply for philosophers. On the contrary, a specific aim is to explore how more informed philosophical dialogue will lead to more insightful public policies and practices.

Case studies describe specific architectural and planning decisions, fisheries policies, urban ecological restorations, and more. The overarching phenomenological perspective, however, means that these discussions emerge within a sensibility that recognizes the foundational significance of human embodiment, culture, language, worldviews, and, ultimately, moral attunement to place.

List of Figures
Acknowledgments

Introduction
Ingrid Leman Stefanovic

Part One: The Lived Experience of Water

Rain Queen
Kirby Manià, Simon Fraser University 

1. Water Gaia: Toward a Scientific Phenomenology of Water
Stephan Harding, Schumacher College

2. Flow Motions and Kinethic Responsiveness
Stephen J. Smith, Simon Fraser University

3. Creaturely Migrations on a Breathing Planet
David Abram, Author and Cultural Ecologist

4. When Salmon Are Deemed Superfluous: Reflecting on a Struggle of Stories
Martin Lee Mueller, Rudolf Steiner University College, Oslo

Part Two: Water and Place

5. The Place of Water
Janet Donohoe, University of West Georgia

6. Engaging the Water Monster of Amsterdam: Meandering Toward a Fair Urban Riversphere
Irene Klaver, University of North Texas

7. Water and the City: Towards an Ethos of Fluid Urbanism
Ingrid Leman Stefanovic, Simon Fraser University

8. What We’re Talking about When We’re Talking about Water: Race, Imperial Politics, and Ruination in Flint, Michigan
Sarah King, Grand Rapids University

Part Three: Rethinking Water Policy, Practice, and Ethics

9. The Bonding Properties of Water: Community, Urban River Restoration, and Non-human Agency
Bryan Bannon, Merrimack College

10. Standing Rock: Water Protectors in a Time of Failed Policy
Trish Glazebrook, Washington State University and Jeff Gessas, University of North Texas

11. Phenomenology, Water Policy, and the Conception of the Polis
Henry Dicks, Université Jean Moulin, France

12. Towards a Complexity Ethics: Understanding and Action on Behalf of Life-World Well-Being
Robert Mugerauer, University of Washington

Part Four: Closing Reflections

Conclusion: Looking Forward: From Poetics to Praxis
Ingrid Leman Stefanovic, Simon Fraser University

The Lure of Water: Four Poems
Dilys Leman, Toronto

List of Contributors
Index

View full details