This book addresses a critical need for a sustained geographical and anthropological inquiry into the social issues of water governance. Rendering visible the ritual ecological practices, contexts and scales through which use, negotiation over and sharing of water occurs at the local level, this book shows the complex functioning and social, cultural, economic and environmental interdependencies of hydrological societies. It examines the difficulties facing local communities in having their rights recognised and their efforts to maintain and assert control of their waterscapes in the face of rapidly changing water governance institutions. It concludes by assessing contemporary challenges to these socio-cultural ways of being, particularly at the interface of accelerated climate variability and development.