What is water? : : the history of a modern abstraction / / Jamie Linton ; foreword by Graeme Wynn.

• Author: Linton, Jamie.
• Place / Publishing House: Vancouver : : UBC Press,, [2010]; 2010
• Year of Publication: 2010
• Language: English
• Series: Nature, history, society,
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (352 pages) :; illustrations, maps.

"We all know what water is, and we often take it for granted. But the spectre of a worldwide water crisis suggests there might be something fundamentally wrong with the way we think about water. Jamie Linton dives into the history of water as an abstract concept, stripped of its environmental, social, and cultural contexts. Reduced to a scientific abstraction--to mere H[subscript 2]O--this concept has given modern society licence to dam, divert, and manipulate water with apparent impunity. Part of the solution to the water crisis involves reinvesting water with social content, thus altering the way we see water. What Is Water? offers a fresh approach to a fundamental problem."--BOOK JACKET.

Table of Contents

Fixing the flow : the things we make of water -- Relational dialectics : putting things in fluid terms -- Intimations of modern water -- From premodern waters to modern water -- The hydrologic cycle(s) : scientific and sacred -- The Hortonian hydrologic cycle -- Reading the resource : modern water, the hydrologic cycle, and the state -- Culmination : global water -- The constitution of modern water -- Modern water in crisis -- Sustaining modern water : the new "global water regime" -- Hydrolectics.