John R. Wagner is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan. He conducts research in Canada, the United States and Papua New Guinea and has published several journal articles on water governance in the Okanagan Valley. In 2007 he was lead guest editor of Customs, Commons, Property and Ecology, a special edition of Human Organization devoted to an analysis of Pacific Island customary property rights systems. Recent publications include "Water and the Commons Imaginary" in the Public Anthropology Forum of Current Anthropology (2012).

List of Figures
List of Tables
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements

Introduction
John Richard Wagner

Part I: Commodification

Chapter 1. Contesting Equivalences: Controversies over Water and Mining in Chile and Peru
Fabiana Li

Chapter 2. Dam Nation: Cubbie Station and the Waters of the Darling
Veronica Strang

Chapter 3.  Water and Ill-being: Displaced People and Dam-based Development in India
Lyla Mehta                 

Part II: Water and Technology

Chapter 4. Aesthetics of a Relationship: Women and Water
Nefissa Naguib

Chapter 5. La Pila de San Juan: Historic Transformations of Water as a Public Symbol in Suchitoto, El Salvador
Hugo De Burgos

Chapter 6. Not so Boring. Assembling and Reassembling Groundwater Tales and Technologies from Malerkotla, Punjab
Rita Brara

Chapter 7. Kenyan Landscape, Identity and Access
Swathi Veeravali

Part III: Urbanization

Chapter 8. Health Challenges of Urban Poverty and Water Supply in Northern Ghana
Issaka Kanton Osumanu

Chapter 9. The Risk of Water: Dengue Prevention and Control in Urban Cambodia
Sarah C. Smith

Chapter 10. The Water Crisis in Ireland: The Socio-Political Contexts of Risk in Contemporary Society
Liam Leonard

Part IV: Governance

Chapter 11. Fairness and the Human Right to Water: A Preliminary Cross-cultural Theory
Amber Wutich, Alexandra Brewis, Sveinn Sigurdsson, Rhian Stotts, and Abigail York

Chapter 12. Indigenous Water Governance and Resistance: A Syilx Perspective
Marlowe Sam and Jeannette Armstrong

Chapter 13.  Bureaucratic Bricolage and Adaptive Co-management in Indonesian Irrigation
Bryan Bruns

Chapter 14. Anthropological Insights into Stakeholder Participation in Water Management of the Edwards Aquifer in Texas
John M. Donahue

Index                 

Everywhere in the world communities and nations organize themselves in relation to water. We divert water from rivers, lakes, and aquifers to our homes, workplaces, irrigation canals, and hydro-generating stations. We use it for bathing, swimming, recreation, and it functions as a symbol of purity in ritual performances. In order to facilitate and manage our relationship with water, we develop institutions, technologies, and cultural practices entirely devoted to its appropriation and distribution, and through these institutions we construct relations of class, gender, ethnicity, and nationality. Relying on first-hand ethnographic research, the contributors to this volume examine the social life of water in diverse settings and explore the impacts of commodification, urbanization, and technology on the availability and quality of water supplies. Each case study speaks to a local set of issues, but the overall perspective is global, with representation from all continents.