A River Runs Through It: Reading the Text and Context of a River
This article is framed and inspired by Jacklyn Cock's Writing the Ancestral River (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2018), which traces the history of the Kowie river in the Eastern Cape and its significance both in her own life and in shaping a specific geographical area. We set out to &qu...
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Published in | English Academy review Vol. 41; no. 1; pp. 6 - 20 |
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Main Authors | , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
Routledge
02.01.2024
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | This article is framed and inspired by Jacklyn Cock's Writing the Ancestral River (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2018), which traces the history of the Kowie river in the Eastern Cape and its significance both in her own life and in shaping a specific geographical area. We set out to "read" the Kromme river through the lens of Cock's "biography-of-a-river" approach, which is both an evocative personal account and a social and environmental history of a river. Like the Kowie, the story of the Kromme river raises issues of competing interests; environmental, economic, and social justice concerns; and the tension between a river viewed in instrumentalist terms or as a complex, precious wetland and estuary. We consider questions such as whether the natural world in itself has inalienable rights, and whether rivers-even minor ones such as the Kromme-should have the right to be protected. |
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ISSN: | 1013-1752 1753-5360 |
DOI: | 10.1080/10131752.2023.2282338 |