Raka Sen

“Losing the Seasons” delves into the deeply seasonal nature of everyday lives and labor practices in the Sundarbans region of India and Bangladesh. This book focuses on the social implications of salinity intrusion and traces chronologically through the six seasons of the year to portray the intimate ways Sundarban residents are adapting to climate change on the ground and how these changes aggregate to reshape social life. The losses residents face include seasons, peace, food systems, fresh water, and more. These losses affect every component of life including major upheavals in their relationship to nature, communities, land, and the built environment. The Sundarbans is one forest spanning a colonially drawn border, which has tremendous implications on the adaptation choices available to those who live there. From the outside, climate adaptation and development have become synonymous, but people in the Sundarbans maneuver through these systems trying to squeeze whatever benefit they can out of them. Beyond the Sundarbans, “Losing the Seasons” offers a glimpse into the ways climate change is lived and resisted in everyday life, and sheds new light on both the crisis of climate catastrophe but also the crisis of its solutions.