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Enclosing Water: Nature and Political Economy in a Mediterranean Valley, 1796-1916 Stefania Barca Enclosing Water is an environmental history of the Industrial Revolution, as inscribed on the Liri valley in Italy’s Central Apennines. Amid forces of revolution and empire, and Enlightenment discourses of ‘improvement’ and political economy, the Liri’s natural wealth - water-power - generated sweeping changes in its landscape and working and living environments. This book tells the story of how defining water as property - both materially and discursively - led to the emergence of an industrial riverscape, and of a concomitant new ecological consciousness; to heightened environmental risks and awareness of those risks. A dramatic century in the Liri’s socio-environmental history, with its cast of new industrial bourgeoisie, engineers and civil servants, illuminates how material developments and ideological currents completely reshaped the relationship between society and nature at the periphery of 19th century Europe. By integrating Political Economy into the narrative of European environmental history, this pioneering book offers a critical new view of discourses of water disorder and environmental politics in the Mediterranean region. ENCLOSING WATER is the winner of the 2011 TURKU BOOK AWARD for environmental history

‘The close and dense connections pinpointed between culture, environment, and economy make this work an enriching, even indispensable read ... Essential.’
R. Spickermann, University of Texas - CHOICE Academic Reviews

‘The Industrial Revolution is one of the great themes for environmental history. Here Barca rises to the challenge, providing a clear case study of an industrial transformation of a riverine environment in its political, intellectual, social, and economic context.’
J.R. McNeill, Georgetown University - Environmental History

‘[Barca’s] penetrating, multi-layered unpacking of this tragic story makes significant contributions to environmental, social and intellectual history. Enclosing Water is essential reading for understanding the dialectical consequences of changing socio-ecological relationships. It offers an original, thought-provoking way of seeing how society creates landscapes out of visionary ideal of itself.’
Harold Platt, Loyola University, Chicago - Environment and History

‘Barca has a very rich and exciting set of concepts that she has developed to interpret the unfolding of the events in the Liri Valley: Enclosing Water; disorder of water; ecology of waterpower; liberating nature; industrial riverscape; the machine in the river; the tragedy of enclosure; seeing like an engineer; the unimproving state; industry and disaster. These concepts are unique to Barca’s highly creative interpretation of environmental history and are what are going to put her stamp on the field’ - Carolyn Merchant, University of California at Berkeley.

We are pleased to announce that Enclosing Water has been accepted for indexing in Thomson Reuters Web of Science Book Citation Index.

LOOK INSIDE THIS BOOK at Amazon.co.uk

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part I: WATER AND REVOLUTIONS

1. The landscape of Political Economy

2. Empire and the ‘disorder of water’

3. The ecology of waterpower

PART II: THE ECONOMY OF WATER

4. Enclosing the river

5. Floods and politics in the Apennines

EPILOGUE

INDEX

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