Anthropology MA Thesis Defence
Leah Marajh: Water Management Amongst the Ancient States of Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Java, and Belize: A Study in Entanglement and Resiliency
Event Details
-
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
2:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Building: Life Health Sciences / DNA Building
Room: C228
Cost: Free
Southeast Asia and Mesoamerica. A comparative approach is employed to show how water management affected the trajectories of the ancient states of Angkor, Cambodia, Bagan, Myanmar, Sukhothai, Thailand, Central and East Java, and Caracol, Belize. Differing types of water management is demonstrated through the use of the adaptive cycle, a conceptual framework through which a broad range of socio-ecological data can be examined in order to explore shifting levels of resilience overtime. To understand why levels of resilience might change overtime, entanglement theory, which looks at the relationships between humans and things is utilized to determine how entangled these societies were with water management. Particular degrees of entanglement and shifting levels of resilience provide the analysis with the means to explore how water management changed overtime as these societies rose, grew, and finally collapsed.