Introduction: Water and Cultural Diversity

Abstract

Truisms about the relation between water and culture abound: Water shapes culture and culture shapes water. Water is crucial for the flourishing of cultures, and viceversa. A cultural stewardship relation towards water is crucial for the health and viability of the world’s water resources. Simple truisms often emerge from immensely complicated and multifaceted human experiences that are in turn, influenced and shaped by conceptual, sociopolitical, and practical realities. In this complex constellation cultural diversity emerges as an indispensable concept, making visible the ways in which human-water relationships reflect natural processes, sociocultural understandings, relationships and norms, and, political and economic interests and institutions. Part I sets out to explore these relations with a sampling of cases and essays that suggest some of the key linkages between cultural diversity and water.