Living Waterscapes: The practice of water in everyday life

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Notes

¹ Ecologist Donald Worster writes, ‘Throughout history, the water cycle has served humans as a model of the natural world. Early civilization saw in it a figure of the basic pattern of life, the cycle of birth, death and return to the source of being. More recently, science has added to that ancient religious metaphor a new perception: the movement of water in an unending, undiminished loop can stand as a model for understanding the entire economy of nature.’ (Worster 1993: 124)

² McGrath writes, ‘in Thai society a person can choose his or her affiliations, creating dynamic-extended household structures rather than a fixed nuclear-family model … Thai groups are fluid and overlapping. This fluidity is not incidental but integral to the organization of society.’ (McGrath 2007: 24)

³ ‘In Siam, the king assumed the status of Mahadhammaraja, a guardian of the way of Buddha, the Lord of Life, protector of mountain forests and life-giving water’ (McGrath 2007: 20).

⁴ This is according to Veer Bhadra Mishra, a hydrological engineer and Hindu priest who for two decades has led a campaign in Varanasi to clean the river. See http://www.wordfocus.com/word-ganges.html