How Water Makes Us Human: Engagements with the Materiality of Water

This book is about how water becomes people – or, put another way, how people and water flow together and shape each other. While the focus of the book is on the relationships held between water and people, it also has a broader message about human relationships with the environment generally – a message that illustrates not only that people are existentially entangled with the material world, but that the materials of the world shape, determine and enable humans to be ‘humans’ in the ways that they are. Offering a selection of anthropological examples from Kenya, Wales and Spain to illustrate how water’s materiality coproductively generates the way people are able to engage with water, this book uses cross-disciplinary perspectives to provide and promote a new analytic – one that encourages ethical, holistic and sustainable relationships with the world around us. This approach challenges representations that ignore, sidestep or are blind to the fleshy materiality of being human, and aims to encourage a re-imagining of the world that acknowledges humanity as intrinsically active-with and part of the fabric of the collection of materials we call planet Earth.
Review
“Luci Attala shows how water has shaped the physical, mythic, and political lives of three contrasting societies. Instead of seeing water as a resource, she asks what it makes of us. This is essential reading, a new way of understanding the surprising power of what is in the world to shape us.” (Alan Ereira, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, author of The Heart of the World)
“It is important for us to discover new ways of experiencing and speaking of our relationships with Nature. This book is a useful and welcome first step.” (David Cadman, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, editor of Speeches and Articles of The Prince of Wales)
About the Author
Luci Attala is a senior lecturer in anthropology at UWTSD, Senior Fellow HEA, Green Gown Award winner for her work on sustainability, and recipient of UN Gold Star Award for work in Kenya.