Wetland Cultures

“With politically sharp […] scholarship and the author’s personal passion, Wetland Cultures recalibrates our understanding of these watery environments, and at a time of ecological crisis, it provides essential reading for enthusiasts and policymakers alike.” 
—Dave Pritchard, Coordinator, Ramsar Culture Network, UK 

“This beautifully composed and curated work takes the reader on a wonderous immersion into the cultural practices and affiliations of a myriad of continuing planetary paludal encounters between humans and wetlands. Encompassing bodily and spiritual entanglements with these complex and dynamic ecosystems, this book is a delicate and joyous watery, marshy sojourn into ways of knowing, seeing and being.” 


—Mary Gearey, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, School of Applied Sciences, University of Brighton, UK 
“From an exploration of wetland representations in art and literature, to their environmental, spiritual and agricultural values that often reflect the colonial gaze, this book offers critical insight into this rich cultural heritage – the implications of which continue to be overlooked in the mainstream global wetlands discourse.” 


—Alan Dixon, Professor of Sustainable Development, , University of Worcester, UK 

Traditional cultures have a long and vital association with wetlands as sacred places imbued with spiritual and ceremonial significance that provide physical sustenance and sources of materials in paludiculture. Ancient Greek and Roman cultures denigrated wetlands as places of disease, terror, horror, the hellish and the monstrous. Judeo-Christian theology was syncretized with them into the mainstream denigration of wetlands. Wetlands are a marginalized community, an oppressed minority and non-binary, queer bodies of water. 

Rod Giblett is Honorary Associate Professor of Environmental Humanities in the Writing and Literature Program at Deakin University, Australia. He has a rich publication history and research focuses on wetland cultural studies, psychoanalytic ecology, conservation counter-theology and Thoreau and Benjamin studies.