Kirsten Hastrup is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen. She received an ERC Advanced Grant in 2008, enabling the collaborative research project Waterworlds (2009-2014). Among her publications are three monographs based on her work on long-term natural and social histories in Iceland. Since then she has worked in Greenland and published many edited volumes such as Anthropology and Nature (2014).

“This collection is a rich quarry of manifold explorations of malleable, multiple, and vital waters in social and cultural life, which are always simultaneously a matter of concern for various political actions, and expressive of their own agentive capacities. Despite – or perhaps because of – the multiplicity of waters and approaches, it can be regarded as an asset to have these contributions combined in one book.” · Anthropos“…anthropology is not a newcomer to the study of water as an object and agent of social organization and cultural imagining, and the current volume introduces the reader to a good deal of this literature. But it also makes an original contribution by assembling a quantity of ethnographic cases and applying the anthropological perspective to issues of knowledge, management, and morality. The collected ethnographies illustrate, to quote Lévi-Strauss, that water is not only good to drink but good to think.” · Anthropology Review Database“A superb book, the chapters provide a wide range of approaches, from excellent descriptive ethnography to hard-hitting critiques of development practice. Water’s qualities provide a common theme and inspire groundbreaking theory.” · Marc Brightman, University College London

• PrefaceIntroduction: Waterworlds at LargeKirsten Hastrup and Frida HastrupChapter 1. East Anglian Fenland: Water, the Work of Imagination, and the Creation of ValueRichard D. G. IrvineChapter 2. Fluid Entitlements: Constructing and Contesting Water Allocations in Burkina Faso, West AfricaBen Orlove, Carla Roncoli, and Brian Dowd-UribeChapter 3. Raining in the Andes: Disrupted Seasonal and Hydrological CyclesAstrid B. StensrudChapter 4. Respect and Passion in a Lagoon in the South PacificCecilie RubowChapter 5. West African Waterworlds: Narratives of Absence versus Narratives of ExcessMette Fog Olwig and Laura Vang RasmussenChapter 6. To the Lighthouse: Making a Liveable World by the Bay of BengalFrida HastrupChapter 7. Enacting Groundwaters in Tarawa, Kiribati: Searching for Facts and Articulating ConcernsMaria Louise Bønnelykke RobertsonChapter 8. Mapping Urban Waters: Grounds and Figures on an Ethnographic Water PathAstrid Oberborbeck AndersenChapter 9. Water Literacy in the Sahel: Understanding Rain and Ground WaterAnette ReenbergChapter 10. Deep Time and Shallow Waters: Configurations of an Irrigation Channel in the AndesMattias Borg RasmussenChapter 11. Moral Valves and Fluid Properties: Water Regulation Mechanisms in the Bâdia of Southeastern MauritaniaChristian ViumChapter 12. Reflecting Nature: Water Beings in History and ImaginationVeronica StrangChapter 13. The North Water: Life on the Ice Edge in the High ArcticKirsten HastrupNotes on Contributors