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In Wetlands and Western Cultures: Denigration to Conservation, Rod Giblett examines the portrayal of wetlands in Western culture and argues for their conservation. Giblett’s analysis of the wetland motif in literature and the arts, including in Beowulf and the writings of Tolkien and Thoreau, demonstrates two approaches to wetlands—their denigration as dead waters or their commendation as living waters with a potent cultural history.
Postmodern Wetlands explores the representation of wetlands (swamps, marshes, etc.) in western culture. For many, wetlands are a place of disease and horror often associated with the melancholy and the monstrous; in short, they are 'black waters'. Yet, ecologically, wetlands are vitally important for human and other life on earth: they are 'living' waters. The aim of this book is to produce a cultural critique of wetlands as both living and black waters. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines and methodologies, the book analyses wetlands in relation to aesthetics and philosophy, cities and human psychology, mythology and narrative and medical, military, social and conservation history. It discusses these issues using examples across a variety of genres and making reference to British, American and Australian wetlands.
Among the most productive ecosystems on earth, wetlands are also some of the most vulnerable. Australian Wetland Cultures argues for the cultural value of wetlands. Through a focus on swamps and their conservation, the volume makes a unique contribution to the growing interdisciplinary field of the environmental humanities. The authors investigate the crucial role of swamps in Australian society through the idea of wetland cultures. The broad historical and cultural range of the book spans pre-settlement indigenous Australian cultures, nineteenth-century European colonization, and contemporary Australian engagements with wetland habitats. The contributors situate the Australian emphasis in international cultural and ecological contexts. Case studies from Perth, Western Australia, provide practical examples of the conservation of wetlands as sites of interlinked natural and cultural heritage. The volume will appeal to readers with interests in anthropology, Australian studies, cultural studies, ecological science, environmental studies, and heritage protection.
Swamps and marshes have traditionally been regarded as places of horror and ill health in western culture - places to be feared, drained and filled. In this wide-ranging study, Rod Giblett examines the swamp from a cross-disciplinary standpoint. Using material from fiction, films and popular culture and drawing on literature, cultural studies, philosophy, social theory, critical geography and medical history, he criticises the urge to drain swamps ('the project of modernity') as masculinist and imperialist.
Traditional cultures have a long and vital association with wetlands as sacred places imbued with spiritual and ceremonial significance that provide physical sustenance and sources of materials in paludiculture. Ancient Greek and Roman cultures denigrated wetlands as places of disease, terror, horror, the hellish and the monstrous. Judeo-Christian theology was syncretized with them into the mainstream denigration of wetlands. Wetlands are a marginalized community, an oppressed minority and non-binary, queer bodies of water.
“One book leads to another; one book grows out of another; one book flows out of others. Flowing is a fitting figure for a book about a river, creeks, wetlands and water. The present volume grew out of a brief discussion of two paintings of wetlands in mid-western Victoria by the nineteenth-century colonial landscape painter Eugene von Guérard. This discussion was part of a chapter on wetlands in Australian painting and photography (Giblett 2020a). It was included in John Ryan’s and Li Chen’s edited collection Australian Wetland Cultures (Ryan and Chen, eds 2020). I also contributed a chapter to this volume on Aboriginal wetland cultures, their sacral water beings and their refraction in Rainbow Serpent anthropology and Rainbow Spirit theology (Giblett 2020e). I take up and develop this discussion in the present volume in relation to particular Aboriginal peoples and places in mid-western Victoria, their practices of wetland cultures and their stories about and images of them, including the Rainbow Serpent." Contents Introduction to the Hopkins River, Its Basin, People and Places 13 Chapter 1. The Cast of Characters and A Companion of A Captain of Conservation. 35 Chapter 2. Where The River Rises: The Upper Hopkins, Its Creeks and Lake Bolac. 57 Chapter 3. Wetlands of ‘Australia Felix’: Between ‘The Grampians’ and The Upper Hopkins 77 Chapter 4. A Ramble Along The River: Through Colonial Places On The Middle Hopkins 103 Chapter 5. People and Place of Hissing Swan: Wetlands On The Middle Hopkins 125 Chapter 6. Framlingham and Hopkins Falls: Aboriginal Places and People On The Lower Hopkins 147 Chapter 7. Where The River Meets The Sea: The Hopkins Estuary 167
Most of the papers in this volume were presented at the Twenty-First Great Basin Anthropological Conference (GBAC) held in Park City in 1988. The theme of the conference was wetlands studies in the Great Basin.
Water Stories in the Anthropocene explores how climate change has emerged as a major theme in our daily lives as it poses a myriad of economic, scientific, political and cultural challenges in the age of the Anthropocene. In all its forms and manifestations, climate change is primarily a water crisis. Water scarcity, droughts, floods, deluge, rising sea levels, ice melting, wetlands loss and sea pollution are among the main threats posed by climate change, wreaking havoc on both human and nonhuman forms of life. This book engages with instances of extreme events related to water (droughts, floods, deluges) and the impact of climate change on some waterbodies (seas and wetlands) in contemporary Anglophone novels. By taking into account a corpus of novels ranging from the various areas of the Anglophone world, and thus shuttling between the Global North and the Global South, the book reads these novels as "water stories." This volume pays attention to the pervasive presence of water in all aspects of our lives, thus showing how narratives can offer insightful accounts of the present water crisis. Alternating between an econarratological perspective, reflections on the Anthropocene and the human/nonhuman imbrications within the blue humanities, the book contributes significantly to the considerations of the imaginative possibilities of these water stories, showing how narratives can offer insightful accounts of the present water crisis.
In the name of agriculture, urban growth, and disease control, humans have drained, filled, or otherwise destroyed nearly 87 percent of the world’s wetlands over the past three centuries. Unintended consequences include biodiversity loss, poor water quality, and the erosion of cultural sites, and only in the past few decades have wetlands been widely recognized as worth preserving. Emily O’Gorman asks, What has counted as a wetland, for whom, and with what consequences? Using the Murray-Darling Basin—a massive river system in eastern Australia that includes over 30,000 wetland areas—as a case study and drawing on archival research and original interviews, O’Gorman examines how people and animals have shaped wetlands from the late nineteenth century to today. She illuminates deeper dynamics by relating how Aboriginal peoples acted then and now as custodians of the landscape, despite the policies of the Australian government; how the movements of water birds affected farmers; and how mosquitoes have defied efforts to fully understand, let alone control, them. Situating the region’s history within global environmental humanities conversations, O’Gorman argues that we need to understand wetlands as socioecological landscapes in order to create new kinds of relationships with and futures for these places.