Will Wright | The University of Sheffield (original) (raw)
Organiser by Will Wright
by Niranjana Ramesh, Emilija Lipovsek, Hannah Boast, Will Wright, Sarah Bennison, Nicola Pritchard, Jonathan Finch, Claire Chambers, Christine Gilmore, George Holmes, Satya Savitzky, and Hetta Howes
"Social Water: an Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Workshop 25th October 2013, University of Yor... more "Social Water: an Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Workshop
25th October 2013, University of York
Call for Papers – deadline 13th September
Water sustains life, but how might it also be said to sustain communities? Social and cultural engagements with water have become a rapidly expanding research area, a development which has challenged and complicated the previously dominant technical–managerial view of water as a ‘natural resource’. There is a growing realisation that ecologically-responsible interactions with water can only come about through an understanding of how people experience, use and ‘think with’ water as a particular type of substance that lies somewhere between nature and culture.
Veronica Strang proposes that: ‘Water’s diversity is [...] a key to its meanings’ (2005: 98). Water comes in many forms: it can be salty, fresh, flowing, frozen, or gaseous; it can be ‘blue’ or ‘green’ (Falkenmark 1997), grey, or ‘virtual’ (Allen 2011). Water might be understood as a materialisation of structures of social power (Swyngedouw 2004), a substance through whose movements we can trace histories of colonialism, underdevelopment and the flow of capital. It can be a space of leisure, sport, or hedonism, or a site of danger, the origin of disasters such as tsunamis or droughts. Perhaps crucially, thinking about water is inseparable from thinking about its opposite, land.
This workshop takes water’s various forms as a provocation and invitation for postgraduates to present similarly diverse critical perspectives on water’s social meanings. It offers a unique opportunity for constructive interdisciplinary conversations on this emerging and vital subject.
Topics to consider might include, but are not limited to:
Water privatisation
Water on film
Water in ecocriticism and environmental studies
Gendered engagements with water
Water in religion, performance and ritual
Waterscapes – the sea, rivers, coastlines, marshes
Disasters and reconstruction
Embodiment, memory and affect
The day will feature a keynote speech by Dr Kimberley Peters, Lecturer in Human Geography at Aberystwyth University, and will conclude with a roundtable discussion led by Professor Graham Huggan of the School of English at the University of Leeds.
This event is hosted by the White Rose Research Studentship Network on Hydropolitics: Community, Environment and Conflict in an Unevenly Developed World. It has been generously supported by the University of York Humanities Research Centre."
Author by Will Wright
The thesis offers an ethnographic account of the ongoing legacies of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunam... more The thesis offers an ethnographic account of the ongoing legacies of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, focusing explicitly on communities in Arugam Bay, South East Sri Lanka. It provides empirical evidence that the tsunami should not be considered ‘over’ or an ‘event’ confined to the past, but instead that it is ongoing, shaping everyday life. The thesis argues that ongoing experiences of the tsunami are not equal, and it unpicks some of the relationships that shape these inequalities, specifically with regards to knowledge production in relation to the disaster. In doing this, it highlights the contested geographies surrounding the area. The thesis presents three overlapping ways in which the tsunami continues to be experienced in everyday life: through its spectacularisation and commodification; through the practices of (I)NGOs; and through the lived coastscape.
Informed by literature that seeks to understand disasters and places ‘on their own terms’, the thesis develops the concept of ‘communities of practice’: a theory of practice which highlights the contextual nature of practices in everyday life, emphasising that they are both influenced by discursive and embodied knowledges, and in turn, produce knowledges. This term is used heuristically to explore the tsunami’s legacies, and highlights the ways in which specific knowledges are produced and contested in the area. The thesis focuses specifically on four key communities of practice: fishing; tourism; surfing; and researching. These are central to the production of everyday life and hence embodied knowledges of the tsunami, and are therefore present throughout the whole thesis. Running alongside this are a number of themes: the agency of the more-than-human, specifically the sea; memory and memorialisation of disaster; and broader theories of space and place. These are mobilised to argue that people continue to live with the tsunami as a part of everyday life.
by Niranjana Ramesh, Emilija Lipovsek, Hannah Boast, Will Wright, Sarah Bennison, Nicola Pritchard, Jonathan Finch, Claire Chambers, Christine Gilmore, George Holmes, Satya Savitzky, and Hetta Howes
"Social Water: an Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Workshop 25th October 2013, University of Yor... more "Social Water: an Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Workshop
25th October 2013, University of York
Call for Papers – deadline 13th September
Water sustains life, but how might it also be said to sustain communities? Social and cultural engagements with water have become a rapidly expanding research area, a development which has challenged and complicated the previously dominant technical–managerial view of water as a ‘natural resource’. There is a growing realisation that ecologically-responsible interactions with water can only come about through an understanding of how people experience, use and ‘think with’ water as a particular type of substance that lies somewhere between nature and culture.
Veronica Strang proposes that: ‘Water’s diversity is [...] a key to its meanings’ (2005: 98). Water comes in many forms: it can be salty, fresh, flowing, frozen, or gaseous; it can be ‘blue’ or ‘green’ (Falkenmark 1997), grey, or ‘virtual’ (Allen 2011). Water might be understood as a materialisation of structures of social power (Swyngedouw 2004), a substance through whose movements we can trace histories of colonialism, underdevelopment and the flow of capital. It can be a space of leisure, sport, or hedonism, or a site of danger, the origin of disasters such as tsunamis or droughts. Perhaps crucially, thinking about water is inseparable from thinking about its opposite, land.
This workshop takes water’s various forms as a provocation and invitation for postgraduates to present similarly diverse critical perspectives on water’s social meanings. It offers a unique opportunity for constructive interdisciplinary conversations on this emerging and vital subject.
Topics to consider might include, but are not limited to:
Water privatisation
Water on film
Water in ecocriticism and environmental studies
Gendered engagements with water
Water in religion, performance and ritual
Waterscapes – the sea, rivers, coastlines, marshes
Disasters and reconstruction
Embodiment, memory and affect
The day will feature a keynote speech by Dr Kimberley Peters, Lecturer in Human Geography at Aberystwyth University, and will conclude with a roundtable discussion led by Professor Graham Huggan of the School of English at the University of Leeds.
This event is hosted by the White Rose Research Studentship Network on Hydropolitics: Community, Environment and Conflict in an Unevenly Developed World. It has been generously supported by the University of York Humanities Research Centre."
The thesis offers an ethnographic account of the ongoing legacies of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunam... more The thesis offers an ethnographic account of the ongoing legacies of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, focusing explicitly on communities in Arugam Bay, South East Sri Lanka. It provides empirical evidence that the tsunami should not be considered ‘over’ or an ‘event’ confined to the past, but instead that it is ongoing, shaping everyday life. The thesis argues that ongoing experiences of the tsunami are not equal, and it unpicks some of the relationships that shape these inequalities, specifically with regards to knowledge production in relation to the disaster. In doing this, it highlights the contested geographies surrounding the area. The thesis presents three overlapping ways in which the tsunami continues to be experienced in everyday life: through its spectacularisation and commodification; through the practices of (I)NGOs; and through the lived coastscape.
Informed by literature that seeks to understand disasters and places ‘on their own terms’, the thesis develops the concept of ‘communities of practice’: a theory of practice which highlights the contextual nature of practices in everyday life, emphasising that they are both influenced by discursive and embodied knowledges, and in turn, produce knowledges. This term is used heuristically to explore the tsunami’s legacies, and highlights the ways in which specific knowledges are produced and contested in the area. The thesis focuses specifically on four key communities of practice: fishing; tourism; surfing; and researching. These are central to the production of everyday life and hence embodied knowledges of the tsunami, and are therefore present throughout the whole thesis. Running alongside this are a number of themes: the agency of the more-than-human, specifically the sea; memory and memorialisation of disaster; and broader theories of space and place. These are mobilised to argue that people continue to live with the tsunami as a part of everyday life.