CONVERSATION Pia
Andrea E . Pia2024, Made in China Journal
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Abstract
China is experiencing climate whiplash: extreme fluctuations between drought and flooding that threaten the health and autonomy of millions of people. Set against mounting anxiety over the future of global water supplies, Andrea E. Pia’s Cutting the Mass Line: Water, Politics, and Climate in Southwest China (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2024) investigates the enduring political, technical, and ethical project of making water available to human communities and ecosystems in a time of drought, infrastructural disrepair, and environmental breakdown. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, archival materials, and statistical data, Pia brings readers into the inner workings of China’s complex water supply ecosystem and demonstrates how citizens’ efforts to keep access to local water sources and flourish in their communities redraw the political possibilities of climate and environmental collective action in unforeseen directions.
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Anthropological Notebooks , 2019
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