In River Life and the Upspring of Nature Naveeda Khan examines
the relationship between nature and culture through the study of the
everyday existence of chauras, the people who live on the chars
(sandbars) within the Jamuna River in Bangladesh. Nature is a primary
force at play within this existence as chauras live itinerantly and
in flux with the ever-changing river flows; where land is here today
and gone tomorrow, the quality of life itself is intertwined with
this mutability. Given this centrality of nature to chaura life, Khan
contends that we must think of nature not simply as the physical
landscape and the plants and animals that live within it but as that
which exists within the social and at the level of cognition, the
unconscious, intuition, memory, embodiment, and symbolization. By
showing how the alluvial flood plains configure chaura life, Khan
shows how nature can both give rise to and inhabit social, political,
and spiritual forms of life.