The Wonder of Water: Lived Experience, Policy, and Practice

by Ingrid Leman Stefanovic (Editor)

Facing droughts, floods, and water security challenges, society is increasingly forced to develop new policies and practices to cope with the impacts of climate change. From taken-for-granted values and perceptions to embodied, existential modes of engaging our world, human perspectives impact decision-making and behaviour.

The Wonder of Water explores how human experience - including our cultural paradigms, value systems, and personal biases - impacts decisions around water. In many ways, the volume expands on the growing field of water ethics to include questions around environmental aesthetics, psychology, and ontology. And yet this book is not simply for philosophers. On the contrary, a specific aim is to explore how more informed philosophical dialogue will lead to more insightful public policies and practices.

Case studies describe specific architectural and planning decisions, fisheries policies, urban ecological restorations, and more. The overarching phenomenological perspective, however, means that these discussions emerge within a sensibility that recognizes the foundational significance of human embodiment, culture, language, worldviews, and, ultimately, moral attunement to place.

280 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2019

Reviews

[Kerry Pickens · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers the subject of water from the beginning of time to how much water exists in aqua space (like cyberspace). I love learning water law and policy, that's just how nerdy I am. It's a fascinating subject but this is not a book about policy. It does have a chapter on the Flint, Michigan situation but why don't they find a solution? I would have left a long time ago. This book is more philosophical and I feel like the author made a strenuous attempt to use every big word they knew like phenomenology.

[Danielle · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is one of those books I wanted to love, but didn’t work out for me. Let’s start with some of the things I really enjoyed. The topic is incredibly relevant, emphasizing the huge importance of water in our lives and how devastating lack of access to clean water is for many communities. It’s important to acknowledge how easy it is to take some needs for granted if you are privileged enough to grow up in certain conditions, so I was eager to absorb this book and let it refocus my attention on the important things this holiday season.

I do believe the book did a great job discussing how critical safe water is and exploring the various facets of how we interact with water day to day. One piece that I found particularly compelling related water to race and community issues. Using Flint, MI as a cornerstone example, the author for that section did an exceptionally good job making the issue personal as well as broadening the scope of discussion to other regions. Aside from this piece there were one or two other highlights in the book (including the quote below which was quite profound), but unfortunately these didn’t tip the scales for me.

“”The logic of capital simply does not have enough capacity to grasp the time extension needed to defuse functional policy that can sustain the contemporary resource base for even the current generation.””

Where this book lost me was the unexpected amount of focus on phenomenology. And before you bring up how it’s mentioned in the description, I’ll clarify that I just expected a more even mix of policy discussion vs. lived experience stories vs. philosophy. Moreover I found the reading to be more difficult than expected, needing to re-read some of the wordier sentences in many pieces. On whole it felt a little more like reading a series of papers for a humanities course than the relaxing yet educational read I’d hoped for.

For these reasons I’ve given the book two stars, since I believe ratings/reviews should be personal and this one just didn’t quite do it for me. However, if you enjoy reading pieces that lean more philosophical and would find a discussion on water by various authors fascinating, this might be a fit for you!

[Deborah Stevens · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an unusual read for me, and I appreciated the opportunity to stretch from my interest in the environmental issues around water usage into some philosophy as applied to water (though I fear much went right over my head). I particularly appreciated the lyricism of the essay "Creaturely Migrations on a Breathing Planet." Recommended for those well-versed in philosophy.

With thanks to the publisher and to NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC!

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you, like me, do not have a working familiarity of words like phenomenological, keep a dictionary at hand. This is a serious book, and while I am glad to have read it, I must admit I did a fair amount of skimming. The book is broken down into a number of essays that approach water from different perspectives: practical, philosophical, architectural, legal, temporal, ethical, moral. Water gives life and takes it away. We take its ubiquity for granted and fight over who owns it. Sentences like this are not uncommon: “Re-membering then, is not passive recollection, but an ongoing political act of restoration, retrieving an ability to see the whole, to see categories and resemblances and resist their unconscious or prereflective rejection.” Essays on the water crises in Flint, Michigan and the Dakota Access Pipeline focus on the environmental justice movement. Humans aren’t taking care of the water supply, and a 2015 UN report finds that in ten years we will have 40% less water than we need.

Special thanks to NetGalley and the University of Toronto Press for a complimentary review copy provided in exchange for an honest review.