There is a tendency in environmental discourses to classify relationships with water as either ‘spiritual’ or ‘commercial’. This chapter suggests that both are concerned with regeneration and productivity. What differentiates them more critically is a shift from relatively passive, low-key interactions with water to more actively managerial forms of engagement that materialize ideas about human dominion over nature and valorize concepts of growth. When unrestrained by concerns for sustainability, these more directive interactions with water result in spiralling intensity in production and the over-use of resources. There is a hope, expressed in this volume, that such material short-termism and a commitment to continual growth can be ameliorated or redirected by a re-embracement of spiritual values. However, sustainable resource use is not merely an issue of spiritual or aesthetic restraint versus the attainment of base desires, but also a wider moral and political debate. In largely secular societies it may more be useful to consider the potential common ground that can be found in a range of interactions with water. Based on long-term ethnographic research in Australia, this chapter is concerned with articulating the points of reconciliation between different groups.

Polarities

In the past few decades, with the rise of a vocal environmental movement in many countries, it has become conventional to present indigenous groups' relationships with water and those of (particularly Western) commercial water users in polarized terms, as if there were little or no common ground between engagements purportedly focused on spiritual issues, and those directed towards production and profit.