HYBRID BOOK LAUNCH EVENT

Thursday 18 May 2023,  4.00 - 6.00 pm BST

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Water Beings

From Nature Worship to the Environmental Crisis

Veronica Strang (University of Oxford)

with Susanne Küchler (UCL) as discussant

Early human relationships with water were expressed through beliefs in serpentine aquatic deities: rainbow-coloured, feathered or horned serpents, giant anacondas and dragons. Representing the powers of water, these beings were bringers of life and sustenance, world creators, ancestors, guardian spirits and law makers. Worshipped and appeased, they embodied people’s respect for water and its vital role in sustaining all living things.
Yet today, though we still recognize that ‘water is life’, fresh- and saltwater ecosystems have been critically compromised by human activities. This major study of water beings, and what has happened to them in different cultural and historical contexts, demonstrates how and why some – but not all – societies have moved from worshipping water to wreaking havoc upon it, and asks what we can do to turn the tide.

‘A spellbinding anthropological itinerary through the winding ways of serpentine water beings as they have manifested through history and across cultures. Luminously illustrated, ingeniously researched, and beautifully narrated, Strang’s book is a treasure, a store of revelatory stories about how materiality, meaning, and myth have intertwined to create the aqueous spirits and deities that have accompanied human being and becoming.’
— Stefan Helmreich, Elting E. Morison Professor of Anthropology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 


The book is published by Reaktion Books, more info here: https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/water-beings 

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