The Social Anthropology Seminar Series with Professor Michael Puett presents a talk with Tulasi Srinivas of Emerson College entitled “The Lake of Fire: Water, Caste and Gender in India's Climate Apocalypse”.

If water is life, as our popular understanding suggests, we ask what is a life without water? Highlighting the paradox between Hinduism’s view of water as female, sacred and sentient, and the endemic pollution of water resources and climate- driven drought in contemporary India, this ethnographic and archival project considers the existential ethics at stake in apocalyptic climate change. Attempting to chart an Anthropology of Wisdom, this talk seeks to think about anthropology's contributions to deepening our understandings of climate justice.