Series
Volume 36
Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology
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Water, Scale and Materiality
Anthropological Perspectives on Hydrosocial Relations
Edited by Veronica Strang and Franz Krause
Afterword by Howard Morphy
208 pages, 41 illus., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-83695-485-9 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (May 2026)
eISBN 978-1-83695-486-6 eBook Not Yet Published
Reviews
“An ambitious and promising contribution to the theoretical and methodological development of the anthropology of water.” • Ina Dietzsch, Institut für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft
Description
Anthropology has an important role in articulating people’s engagements with water at different spatial and temporal scales, and in showing how local relationships with waterways and marine areas translate into larger anthropogenic impacts on regional and global ecosystems. This volume explores diverse relationships with waterbodies, and considers how these are expressed in art, material culture and infrastructures. Focusing on the multiple and overlapping scales at which people relate to water in contexts including wave science, Indigenous cosmology, extractive industries and environmental activism, it suggests that efforts to achieve more sustainable and equitable engagements with water must also be multi-scalar.
Veronica Strang is a cultural anthropologist with a longstanding interest in societies’ engagements with water. Following a decade as the Director of Durham University's Institute of Advanced Study, she is now affiliated to the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford.
Franz Krause is an anthropologist interested in the role of water in society and culture. As Professor of Environmental Anthropology, he works at the Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities (MESH) research hub, at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Global South Studies Center, University of Cologne, Germany.



