Reflections on Water

The fluidity of transboundary waters represents contemporary challenges to modern governance perfectly. This book offers conceptual and empirical support for the idea that the human relationship with water must move beyond rationalist definitions of water as product, property, and commodity. Depending on context, water may be a security issue, a gift of nature, a product of imagination, or an integral part of the natural or cultural ecology. The contributors represent a range of disciplines, including anthropology, law, environmental analysis, political science, and social ecology. Included are case studies of the Imperial and Mexicali valleys on the U.S.-Mexico border, parks and rivers in Zimbabwe, salmon in Pacific Northwest, the Yellowstone Yukon Conservation Initiative, Lake Constance in Central Europe, the Black Sea, and the Inguri River between Azerbaijan and Georgia.