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River Life and the Upspring of Nature
Language:
English
Published/Copyright:
2023
About this book
In River Life and the Upspring of Nature Naveeda Khan examines the relationship between nature and culture through the study of the everyday existence of chauras, the people who live on the chars (sandbars) within the Jamuna River in Bangladesh. Nature is a primary force at play within this existence as chauras live itinerantly and in flux with the ever-changing river flows; where land is here today and gone tomorrow, the quality of life itself is intertwined with this mutability. Given this centrality of nature to chaura life, Khan contends that we must think of nature not simply as the physical landscape and the plants and animals that live within it but as that which exists within the social and at the level of cognition, the unconscious, intuition, memory, embodiment, and symbolization. By showing how the alluvial flood plains configure chaura life, Khan shows how nature can both give rise to and inhabit social, political, and spiritual forms of life.
Author / Editor information
Naveeda Khan is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, author of Muslim Becoming: Aspiration and Skepticism in Pakistan, also published by Duke University Press, and In Quest of a Shared Planet: Negotiating Climate from the Global South, and editor of Beyond Crisis: Re-evaluating Pakistan.
Reviews
"An empirically rich study of changing land and those seeking to carve out an existence upon it. [River Life and the Upspring of Nature] can serve as a model for other authors seeking to look at the interrelation between our environment and ourselves, and the existential questions that a changing world poses to us."
-- Andrew Alan Johnson Ethnos
"The book is well written, impressive in its scope, and detailed in its application. . . . a valuable addition to the growing literature on rethinking rivers, lands, and peoples in South Asia, especially those people who are living on river islands that had remained beyond the periphery of mainstream academic vision. It aids understanding of why people live tenuous lives on uncertain grounds, and how their lives are shaped by the river and how they shape the river’s flow."
-- Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt Asian Studies Review
Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Maps
ix -
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Preface
xi -
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Acknowledgments
xiii -
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Introduction. River Life and Death
1 -
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1. Moving Lands in the Skein of Property and Kin Relations
28 -
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2. History and Morality between Floods and Erosion
59 -
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3. Elections on Sandbars and the Remembered Village
94 -
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4. Decay of the River and of Memory
131 -
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5. Death of Children and the Eruption of Myths
160 -
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Epilogue. The Chars in Recent Years
191 -
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Notes
197 -
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References
215 -
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Index
229
Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
January 18, 2023
eBook ISBN:
9781478024002
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook ISBN:
9781478024002
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
