ABSTRACT

In this first part of the volume, we focus on water as a principal configurative force in society. The idea is to show some of the ways in which social life and community building are constituted by the access to water and to the resources that come along with a particular water body in the immediate environment. Whether water derives from rain, rivers, or wells, and however it is reached, the actual materiality of water – such as its liquidity, its variable quantity, its possible scarcity, its sudden absence, and its occasional solidity – all of it premeditate water’s power at infiltrating social forms. This applies not only to freshwater, though access to clean drinking water is essential for survival and often subject to social regulation; also oceans and lagoons have the power to shape society by their being part of the larger resource space upon which social communities depend for their livelihood. Presently, many communities are experiencing notable changes in their immediate water resources that have become less predictable, both in terms of seasonality and quantity. This troubles people’s perception of the immediate resource space and creates a sense of an uncertain future, as we shall see in some detail in the narratives below.