Description
Scitus Academics LLC Water Knowledge and the Environment in Asia by Jayanti Kumari
Water is must for the endurance of life, yet only 2.5% of the world’s water
supply is readily available for consumption, and that percentage is rapidly
decreasing due to pressures from population growth, climate change and
poor water management. All of those three pressure points converge in
South Asia, where some of the fastest-growing populations in the world
grapple with melting ice caps, rising sea levels and depleting groundwater,
that are further exacerbated by mismanagement from public and private
actors. Understanding the various ways in which knowledge about water is
shaped and communicated, the so-called epistemologies of water, in the
Asian context are essential to tackling the looming water crisis in the region.
In Asia, water is subject to a great diversity of knowledge systems and
practices. Some of these appear to be allied to scrupulous spaces – when
related with unambiguous local cultures or religions – while others are
ordered by functional and symbolic differentiations, like expert, political or
sacred knowledge.
Water, Knowledge and the Environment in Asia: Epistemologies, practices
and locales attempts to outline the exchange and renovation of
environmental knowledge fragments and practices across the boundaries
of varied knowledge systems. From the glaciers of the Himalaya to the rivers
and water utilization systems of Asia, from the highland Southeast Asia to the
ocean surrounding the Indonesian archipelago, the project examines how
varied forms of knowledge pertaining to water flow, encounter and entangle
with each other. Specifically in Asia, well-tested practices surrounding
water and ice are frequently indivisible from ritual or cosmological
representation and performance. This work focuses on the nodes through
which certain knowledge items, “facts” and practices travel across cultural
boundaries, creating a transcultural network of differentially connected
meanings. This Monograph will be of interest for graduate students,
practitioners and early career researchers.