Water

Abundance, Scarcity, and Security in the Age of Humanity

Bibliographic Data

ID7307989
AuthorsA Carse (0000-0002-6457-8448, Vanderbilt University, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume104
Issue4
Pages995-995
Publication date2018-01-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jax436
OpenAlexW2888261485
LanguageEN
Citations received4

Several decades ago the sociologist Murray Davis proposed a new field—the sociology of the interesting—based on a proposition: interesting theories deny the assumptions of their audience (“That's Interesting!,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Dec. 1971, pp. 309–44). Noninteresting theories, by contrast, affirm audience assumptions. To make his case, Davis reviewed influential social theories and identified twelve categories of interesting propositions. One of those concerned organization: “What seems to be a disorganized (unstructured) phenomenon is in reality an organized (structured) phenomenon” (p. 313). So it is with water management, argues the geographer Jeremy J. Schmidt in his ambitious, deeply researched, and thoughtful work of interdisciplinary scholarship. The book's argument and structure turn on a proposition about water management that Davis would likely have found interesting. Schmidt argues that contemporary global water management is not, as experts often assert, a disorganized (unstructured) phenomenon—a “haphazard bricolage” (p. 7) of ideas—but rather, a common way of thinking shaped by an underlying philosophy that leads to problematic outcomes. That philosophy, “normal water,” is the book's main subject

Argument (complex analysis · Bricolage · Epistemology · Geographer · Geography · Phenomenon · Political science · Proposition · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Subject (documents · Law · Philosophy · Water Governance and Infrastructure

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub