Promotional Information

An unexpected story of climate change initiatives that threaten a complex waterscape

About the Author

Camelia Dewan is postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo.

Reviews

"Misreading the Bengal Delta is a must-read for every (social) scientist, journalist, activist or development worker who has ever evoked Bangladesh as an instant image of sea-level rise and climate change disasters. It expertly outlines how 'adaption regimes' reproduce existing postcolonial inequalities and adds some much-needed complexity to our understanding of climate change and environmental vulnerabilities in the global South." (Social Anthropology / Anthropoologie Sociale) "[A] methodologically innovative and rigorous work...The clarity the book offers in identifying the problems around the multiple framings of climate change makes it essential reading for scholars, development practitioners, government policymakers, and general readers interested in climate change and development, Bangladesh, or both." (H-Environment) "Insightful case studies and [a] lucid portrayal of the complex and fluid entanglement of landscapes, people and technologies through time." (Contributions to Indian Sociology) "Accessible and eloquently written...[Dewan] convincingly shows that coherent policy ideas around climate change adaptation first and foremost tend to reflect the viewpoints and interests of policy actors themselves rather than those of the envisioned beneficiaries." (Journal of Peasant Studies) "A superb decolonial ethnography...Misreading the Bengal Delta is essential reading for anyone who wishes to think critically about climate change and its local effects, about the modes through which it is made legible, and about how superficial reading may be avoided through deep decolonial, historical, and ethnographic exegeses." - Stefan Helmreich (American Anthropologist) "Camelia Dewan brilliantly illustrates how narratives of improvement have acted as metacodes from colonial time to modern day Bangladesh." (Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography) "Uniquely, this work focuses on a variety of 'development brokers' beyond the ubiquitous English-speaking Western development professionals. Through this focus on brokerage in the development-climate nexus, Dewan highlights the problematic power relations currently deciding climate knowledge production and, through it, advising adaptation projects which 'misread' the delta." (South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies) "[Dewan] unveils a perspective on the Bengal delta that is both very intriguing and insightful." (Water Alternatives Book Review) "Dewan's account is a rich and nuanced portrayal of how climate change and development practitioners translate climate change into practice, and the effects that these translations have on local communities...A brilliant and urgent ethnography." (Anthropology Book Review) "Dewan's book is a timely and well-critiqued ethnography of how development projects targeting to adapt to the impact of climate change can become maladaptation because of the missing local context." (Society and Culture in South Asia)