Abstract
Here I develop a model around two key riverine components: meandering and riverspheres. I show how an analysis of their conceptual and material workings, and their interactive dynamics, facilitates a revaluing, reimagining, and revitalizing of rivers and thus contributes to biocultural conservation and cultural diversification. Meandering and riversphere are presented as a functional, dynamic, nondeterministic model for moving beyond the confines of positivist constructs and assumptions about rivers and how we might live well with them as urban citizens, equitable and sustainable. The Meander River and the Los Angeles River afford a space for exploring rivers in human affairs. The Meander, once a geographic space critical to great historical movements and now nearly erased from the cultural imagination, serves as a profound metaphor upon which to build new old ways of thinking. The little Los Angeles River, once nearly forgotten by the very city that derived its existence from it, flows as an example of how rethinking and reimagining can lead to re-rivering and the redefining of a riversphere.
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Klaver, I.J. (2018). Reclaiming Rivers from Homogenization: Meandering and Riverspheres. In: Rozzi, R., et al. From Biocultural Homogenization to Biocultural Conservation. Ecology and Ethics, vol 3. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99513-7_3
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