Aquanomics 2016 (original) (raw)

The political economy of water

2006

This volume is the second of three that explore all aspects of water - social, cultural, political, religious, historical, economic and technological - from ancient times to the present day. The contributors examine the changing histories of water as a private or common good; the politics of water at local, urban, national and international level; water in cities; great river plans; dams; river biographies; and images of water in religion, myth, literature and art. Empirical and ethnographic case studies from around the world feature.

Social Water: An Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Workshop

Christine Gilmore, Nicola Pritchard, Sarah Bennison, Will Wright, Hannah Boast, Emilija Lipovsek, George Holmes, Claire Chambers, Jonathan Finch, Niranjana Ramesh, Hetta Howes, Satya Savitzky

"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."

Rivers of Scarcity. Utopian Water Regimes and Flows Against the Current

'Utopians organized space, nature and society to perfection, including land and water governance -- rescuing society from deep-rooted crisis: “The happiest basis for a civilized community, to be universally adopted”. These days, similarly, well-intended utopian water governance regimes suggest radical transformations to combat the global Water Crisis, controlling deviant natures and humans. This lecture examines water utopia and dystopia as mirror societies. Modern utopias ignore real-life water cultures, squeeze rivers dry, concentrate water for the few, and blame the victims. But water-user collectives, men and women, increasingly speak up. They ask scholars and students to help question Flying Islands experts’ claims to rationality, democracy and equity; to co-create water knowledges and co-design water governance.'

Editorial: Water matters: agency, flows, and frictions

To say that water is crucial to life is axiomatic. It pervades daily life, manifests itself in a variety of spaces and forms, and is used in a multitude of ways. It also pervades geography's history as an academic discipline, whether through studies of hydrological processes, examinations of resource distribution, or conceptualisations of nature ^ culture relationships. Water's place in such theorising is not limited to recent explorations in political ecology and hybridity but extends back to Semple's 1911 account of water's ``role in shaping the history of specific societies'' (Ekers and Loftus, 2008, page 699). Geographers' engagement with water is diverse and disparate. Our aim in developing this theme issue is to showcase a diversity of ontological and epistemological approaches to understanding and examining water, bringing them together to highlight some of the directions future research on human ^water relations might take.

Social Water - Voices From Around The World

Web magazine "Voices from Around the World", 2017 (3). http://voices.uni-koeln.de/2017-3/socialwateranintroduction We encounter water every day. It is a vital substance biologically as much as socially. We may notice this in art exhibitions and university courses communicating submersed and subversive facts about water; the rhythms of floods and tides resonating with fishing techniques and conflict patterns; inundations carrying moral and political weight as much as water and pollution; and particular mixtures of water and land generating wealth, anxieties and memories. In short, wherever people deal with water, they are involved not only with a physical element, but also with social relations. In fact, whenever we pretend that water is foremost the molecule H2O, we ignore all the political, economic, infrastructural, emotional and legal aspects of this element without which water would not be what it is for us today. This issue explores some of the ways in which water is profoundly social, both in the sense of being co-produced by social life, and by being a core constituent of it. Some contributions to this issue do this through the examples listed above. Others illustrate the way water positions people and their perspectives. A few show how large water infrastructures reshuffle social lives. And some suggest that water may sometimes be better imagined as a word in the plural, rather than a singular, universal substance.