Fluid Phenomena : The River and Anthropocene Life-world in the Asia-Pacific / edited by Iftekhar Iqbal, Noor Hasharina Hassan, Asiyah Kumpoh.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Iqbal, Iftekhar, editor.

Hasharina Hassan, Noor, editor.

Kumpoh, Asiyah, editor.

Series:

African and Asian Anthropocene: Studies in the Environmental Humanities ; 2.

Social Sciences E-Books Online, Collection 2026.

African and Asian Anthropocene: Studies in the Environmental Humanities ; 2

Social Sciences E-Books Online, Collection 2026

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Asian Studies.

Comparative studies.

Japan.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (0 pages)

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

The River and Anthropocene Life-world in the Asia-Pacific

Place of Publication:

Leiden ; Boston : BRILL, 2026.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The Fluid Phenomena explores the “life-world” of the riverspace that has shaped the ecological, economic, cultural, and governing processes, affecting both humans and other-than-humans in the Asia-Pacific region, including parts of South Asia, Southeast Asia, Japan and Australia. Using interdisciplinary conceptual and methodological tools, the book ties together three strands of human engagements with rivers: the representation of the river as a other-than-human entity in intellectual discourse, indigeneity, and creative imagination; the layered livelihood activities as supported and endangered by the river; and the governance of the river from the vantage point of development projects and popular responses. In doing so, the book demonstrates the centrality of and predicaments faced by the river in the late Anthropocene.

Contents:

Front Cover

Half Title

Series Page

Title Page

Copyrights Informations

Contents

Acknowledgements

Figures and Tables

Figures

Tables

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

References

Part 1: Reimagining the Other-Than-Human

1 Rivers as Representational Tropes in the Tropicalization and Modernization of India

1 River History and Symbolic Landscapes

2 Tropical Landscape and Scenery

3 Engineering the Tropics

4 Conclusion

2 A Monsoon River and Its Humans: the Karnaphuli in India and Bangladesh

1 A Monsoon River

2 Shifting Human Power

2.1 Four Cultural Zones

2.2 A Sinew of Empire

2.3 A State Border

3 Shifting Nonhuman Power

3.1 A Development Site

3.2 Ecological Invasion

3.3 Hazardous Water

3.4 The Hydrosocial Cycle

3 River Territory: Spatial History, Power and Precarity

1 River Territory

2 Spatial History

3 Imperial Modernity

4 Monsters and Mysteries: Rivers in the Contemporary Bruneian Imaginary

1 The Environment in Bruneian "stories" in the Age of the Anthropocene

2 Modes of Storytelling: Novels and Other Mediums

3 The River as Origin

4 River as Threatened and Threatening

5 Conclusion

5 Indigenous Hydropoetics: Voicing Rivers through Aboriginal Australian Poetry

1 Introduction

2 Towards Indigenous Hydropoetics: Embracing Potamocentrism

3 Derbal Yerrigan and Wagyl: Jack Davis' Swan River Hydropoetics

4 Maiwar and Moodagurra: Samuel Wagan Watson's Brisbane River Hydropoetics

5 Marrambidya Bila and Girawu: Jeanine Leane's Murrumbidgee River Hydropoetics

6 Conclusion: Indigenous Hydropoetics as River Poiesis

6 Ethico-Political and Analytic Ambivalence of a Posthumanist Approach to Environmental History

1 The Intellectualist Approach and Its Contradictions.

2 On Lived Experience and the Embracing of Paradoxes

3 Conclusion

Part 2: Everyday Life and Livelihoods

7 Navigating the Blame: an Urban Ethnography of a Riverine Village in Manila, the Philippines

1 Setting the Stage: Living with Precariousness in a Riverine Settlement

2 Constructing Risk and Vulnerability: Who's Scared of the River?

3 River-Based Moral Economy and Shifting Attitudes on Tides

4 The Pollution Crisis: a Securitized Response on the Margins

5 Reviving the Dead: Afterthoughts of an Ethnographer on the Margins

8 Making Kin along the Mekong River: Exploring Multispecies Entanglements in the Anthropocene

1 "Making Kin": Haraway's Multispecies Studies in the Anthropocene

2 Situating the Mekong River in Regional Development

3 Multispecies Anthropocene in the Narrative of the Mekong Giant Catfish in Chiang Khong

4 Kin Making with Entangled Lives along the Mekong River in Chiang Khong

9 The Many Meanings of Water: an Exploration of the Life-World of Two Cities on the Murray River

1 Murray River Imaginaries

2 The Research Context

3 Theoretical and Analytic Frame

4 Method

5 Study Sites

6 Findings

7 Participants' Characteristics

8 Connections to the Murray River

9 Recreational Use and Enjoyment of the Murray River

10 Connections to Blue and Green Spaces

10.1 Green Spaces

10.2 Blue Spaces

10.3 Gardens

11 Murray River Health

12 Water Scarcity

13 Conclusion

10 River Frontier: Nexus of Land, Water, and People in the Bangladesh Delta

1 The River Port

2 Three Stories

3 The New Kinship

4 Uncertainties, Politics, and Possibilities at the River Frontier

5 Concluding Remarks

11 Freshwater River Fisheries in Borneo: the Case of Ikan Semah in Ulu Temburong, Brunei Darussalam

1 A River-Based Cultural Ecology Framework.

2 Background to the Study and Methods

3 Iban Settlement Pattern and Resource Use in Temburong

4 Knowledge of How to Bring a Boat to Wong Wan

5 Knowledge of Ikan Semah and How to Catch Them

6 Why So Delicious?

7 Conclusion

12 Ethno-Commercial Networks in Northwest Borneo: a View from the River

1 Geography of River Networks and Settlements

2 The Connectivity between the River and Ethnic Groups

3 Trade and Commerce on the River Space

3.1 Non-Malay Ethnic Groups

3.2 The Malays

3.3 The Chinese

4 Indigenous Livelihood

5 Ethnic Interaction with the Colonial Economy

6 Conclusion

Archival Documents

Secondary Literature

Part 3: Development and Governance

13 Dam Trouble: Transdisciplinarity

2 Transdisciplinary Projects in the Global South

3 Methodology

4 Social Conflict and the Politics of Scale

5 Cambodia: a Political-Economic Context

6 Local Non-Academic Stakeholders and the LS2: Deciphering the Interactions

7 The SSRCL: Preparation and Challenges

8 Dealing with an Intransigent Reality

9 Conclusion

14 Ecological Governance of the Padma and the Teesta Rivers

1 Ecological Governance of the River

2 River Governance in Bangladesh: Policies and Challenges

3 Rivers' Living Being Status

4 National River Conservation Commission (NRCC)

5 Bangladesh Environment Conservation Act (BECA), 1995

6 Conservation of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources

7 Bangladesh Water Act (BWA) 2013

8 Shortcomings of the Bangladesh Water Act 2013

9 Challenges in Water Governance: the Case of Bangladesh-India Transboundary Rivers

9.1 Ganges Water Treaty of 1996

9.2 Uncertainty Over the Teesta Treaty

10 Policy Gaps in Transboundary River Governance

11 Conclusion

15 Islands of the Mekong, or the Existential Flood: Co-Creation.

1 Water

2 Mekong Worlds

3 An Existential View

16 The Fluidity of 'Tradition' in Japanese

1 Technology and Craftsmanship in River Improvement Work

2 Interactions between Human and River

2.1 Agency of River

2.2 Human-River Interactions and Connections

3 Localization of River Engineering

3.1 River Theory and Localization

3.2 Between 'tradition' and 'modernity' in River Technology

4 Locality of River Improvement Technology

4.1 The Characteristics of the Soda Mattress: Local Resource Recycling Method

4.2 Interaction between Design Engineers and Construction Workers

4.3 Advancement of Manualization: Separation of Planning, Design, and Construction

5 Reimagining 'Traditional' Construction Methods

5.1 Questioning Extreme River Control: the Process towards Creating "near-nature river restoration"

5.2 'Traditionalized' River Engineering Techniques

6 The Collectivity and Constraints of Techniques/Craftsmanship

6.1 The Hybrid Nature of 'Traditional' Construction Methods

6.2 Temporal and Spatial Constraints of Technology/Craftsmanship

7 The Future of 'traditional' Construction Methods

Acknowledgement

17 Riverine Lifelines of the Brunei Sultanate

1 The Need for a Dynamic Research Framework

1.1 Drastic Changes in the Cultural Realm

1.2 From Water to Land

2 Earth Surface Processes and Human-Environment Relationships: towards a Dynamic Methodological Framework

3 From Landscape Physicality to the Social: a Renewed Approach Towards Human-Environment Relationship and Network

3.1 Riverine Network and Environment

3.1.1 The Imang-Limau Manis Route

3.1.2 The Damuan-Sengkurong Route

3.1.3 The Kedayan Route

3.1.4 The Changing Limbang Route

3.2 Salient Cultural Features

3.2.1 The Pengalu

3.2.2 Bartering at the 'Tamu'.

3.2.3 The Stone Trading Post and the Limbang Connection

3.2.4 Extensions of the Water City

4 Post-Second World War Modernisation, Globalisation and Climate Change: Its Transformative Effects on the Lifelines

5 River Lifelines and Change: a Conclusion

Part 4: Epilogue

18 Rivers and Planetary Politics in the Anthropocene

Index

Back Cover.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

90-04-75810-0

9789004758100

OCLC:

1586549989

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789004758100 DOI