WATER ECOLOGIES IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN: INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO HYDROSOCIAL WORLDS
Water occupies a central place in the socio-environmental transformations underway across Latin America and the Caribbean. Far from being merely a natural resource, it participates in the shaping of territories, memories, ontologies, forms of government, ecological relations and horizons of the future. Rivers, seas, aquifers, wetlands, glaciers and hydraulic systems are today at the center of disputes associated with extractive expansion, the climate crisis, urbanization, pollution and growing inequalities in access to and control over water resources. Likewise, they have been the scenes of displacement, conflict, migration and the disappearance of communities. At the same time, these spaces sustain ritual and care practices, local knowledge, forms of collective organization and bonds that transcend conventional frameworks of environmental management. In numerous contexts, they also constitute a living heritage that articulates intergenerational relationships and contributes to the cultural and ecological continuity of territories, as well as to the shaping of spaces of memory, historical reparation and resistance.
This symposium proposes to address water as a meeting field among different analytical traditions and forms of knowledge production. From anthropology, history, geography, archaeology, museology, environmental studies, the arts, architecture, law and related disciplines, we seek to explore how water dynamics intervene in the production of territorialities, in the construction of collective memories, and in the shaping of hydrosocial worlds. We are particularly interested in examining the assemblages linking communities, institutions, infrastructures, landscapes, local and expert knowledge, everyday practices and more-than-human entities around water.
Among other questions, we are interested in discussing: How do water dynamics shape particular ways of inhabiting and experiencing territory? In what ways do disputes over water reorder relationships among local communities, states, economic actors and ecological environments? How do community, scientific, technical and ritual knowledges intervene in processes of water management, defense and restoration? What role do museums, archives, collections and other devices of cultural mediation play in constructing memories, narratives and heritages linked to water? How do artistic and research-creation practices contribute to imagining, experiencing and producing other relationships with water? And what ecological and political futures emerge from experiences of care, restoration and coexistence with water?
We call for empirical research and theoretical reflections addressing socio-environmental conflicts, community management, experimental and collaborative methodologies, water heritages, hydraulic infrastructures, public policy, ritual practices, cultural representations of water, and processes of territorial defense. Through this interdisciplinary dialogue, the symposium seeks to contribute to a broader understanding of the multiple ways in which water participates in shaping social, cultural, ecological and political life in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as the challenges posed by its care amid growing environmental uncertainty.
