In Praise of Floods - The Untamed River and the Life It Brings

James C. Scott reframes rivers as alive and dynamic, revealing the consequences of treating them as resources for our profit"A posthumous conclusion to a scholarly career of upending conventional wisdom . . . and [of] writing sweeping treatments of the distant past, which nonetheless managed to broach some of the most vexing political questions of our time."-Nikil Savil, New YorkerRivers, on a long view, are alive. They are born; they change; they shift their channels; they forge new routes to the sea; they move both gradually and violently; they can teem (usually) with life; they may die a quasi-natural death; they are frequently maimed and even murdered.It is the annual flood pulse-the brief time when the river occupies the floodplain-that gives a river its vitality, but it is human engineering that kills it, suppressing the flood pulse with dams, irrigation, siltation, dikes, and levees. In demonstrating these threats to the riverine world, award-winning author James C. Scott examines the life history of a particular river, the Ayeyarwady (Irrawaddy) of Burma, the heartland and superhighway of Burman culture.Scott opens our understanding of rivers to encompass their entirety-tributaries, wetlands, floodplains, backwaters, eddies, periodic marshlands, and the assemblage of life forms dependent on rivers for their existence and well-being. For anyone interested in the Anthropocene and the Great Acceleration, rivers offer a striking example of the consequences of human intervention in trying to control and domesticate a natural process, the complexity and variability of which we barely understand.

Product details

• Authors: James C. Scott
• Publisher: Yale University Press Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 18.03.2025
• EAN: 9780300278491
• ISBN: 978-0-300-27849-1
• No. of pages: 248
• Series: Yale Agrarian Studies Series
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Biology > Ecology; Non-fiction book > Nature, technology > Nature: general, reference works; Social sciences, law, business > Business > Business administration; NATURE / Natural Resources, SCIENCE / Natural History, NATURE / Ecosystems & Habitats / Rivers, Environmental Management, Ecological science, the Biosphere, Limnology (inland waters), The Earth: Natural History General, The Earth: natural history: general interest, Limnology (Freshwater)