On the occasion of the AAM Special Issue, MANAGING GLOBAL SOCIAL WATER , the editors Nadia Breda and Elena Bougleux will organize a debate on 23rd March 2018 at the University of Florence.
Practices, strategies and rituals related to water have been studied in depth by anthropologists. In our perspective, all the specific and disciplinary declinations of water are entangled in a social-water continuum that cannot be separated or split into fragmented elements. Global Social Water unfolds as a unique multiple concept. At the same time, the Anthropocenic approach meets and amplifies our need and desire as anthropologists to create a concrete occasion of dialogue.
In such a framework, the processes and the crises implicated with water appear as the most urgent ones, and require complex visions. Water can no longer be understood by unrelated actors, and no local insight on water can stand independently from the multi-scale picture drawn within a global-social continuum. The authors contributing to the AAM special make solid references to their ethnographic research, localizing their reflections on very specific water-related grounds: from rivers in Southern India to the Anthroposophic Community in Italy, from the Venice Lagoon to Agro Pontino, from the sea and its coastlines to the water needed to make wine. At the same time, the authors project their visions into a wider cosmology of meanings and inscribe their discourses in the framework of the Anthropocene so their outcomes can be shared and discussed according to diverse competences and disciplines.
Through this set of papers, anthropologists have started a fruitful dialogue with climatologists, architects, marine biologists, botanists, economists and more, each bringing their specific contribution to our studies. The emerging vision mainly depicts the issue of water as a natural + social resource, where the natural and social dimensions always remain interconnected and interdependent, each requiring a local and a large scale perspective in a global and social approach.
For more info: nadia.breda@unifi.it