Multiple ways of sharing (and interacting with) research findings: the “Troubling Waterscapes” project

It all started a few months before the biannual conference POLLEN2020: Contested Natures: Power, Possibility, Prefiguration, that was supposed to be held in Brighton, UK, in June 2020. Irene Leonardelli and Enid Still, two of WEGO-ITN Early Stage Researchers, together with their colleague and PhD candidate Arianna Tozzi, as well as artist Sneha Malani, were thinking of how to present their research findings in an interactive, less academic and more collective way. Soon the idea of an immersive art exhibition emerged, where it would be possible to engage in reflections with the participants, not necessarily by means of traditional panel discussions or roundtables.

Then COVID-19 hit.

After some consideration, they decided to move online. Instead of a traditional art installation, they developed an interactive online presentation, in which virtual visitors could move back and forth through the maps and stories of the fictional village of Pravah, in India, where Irene did her research on women who cultivate flowers with wastewater. Located in a notoriously drought-prone region, the village receives wastewater from Pune for irrigation purposes. As the wastewater reaches Pravah, however, it contaminates existing water resources. There is, of course, a symbolic, troubling, but also somewhat poetic contrast, between this polluted water and the flowers they grow.

The project came to life at the Pollen Conference, which ended up being held in September 2020. Now, their work – called Troubling Waterscapes, based on Donna Haraway’s “staying with the trouble” concept -, has become an permanent and immersive platform: troublingwaterscapes.com

The researches, who work with water and agriculture, explained their website in a blog post for UPE collective:

“We started reflecting together on different ways of being with, understanding, knowing and feeling water. Speaking online from isolation across different parts of the world, we started adding layers to the map in the form of photos, poetry, satirical sketches, reflection and animations. These expressions were sparked by our collective conversations as we further troubled and questioned our engagement with waters and agriculture from multiple perspectives. Together, we reflected on what water infrastructures are (materially and symbolically) about their histories and meanings. We discussed how the people’s experiences and engagements with different waters (groundwater, wastewater, rain water) change throughout time and space, and how these differences are reflected across  multiple intersecting identities. We questioned how the very materiality of water, its fluidity, transparency, taste, affects everyday dealings and experiences with water across different waterscapes.”

For more information on the idea behind this WEGO-ITN project, check out the blog post.

And, of course, don’t miss the final results! Welcome to Troubling Waterscapes.

Registrations are open for ‘FPE Dialogues on Re-thinking Food’

Registrations are now open for our ‘Feminist Political Ecology Dialogues on Re-thinking Food’ on July 1st & 2nd at University of Passau. Register via the following link: https://bit.ly/2TUaoPp

About Rethinking Food Passau

Food is essential to sustaining relational webs of life. Difficult times around the world have only further demonstrated this interdependence and the need to think differently about food systems. To attend to the question of what constitutes alternative agriculture and food practices, and why it is important, the “Feminist Political Ecology Dialogues on Re-thinking Food” has been organized by the University of Passau. It is part of a series of events organized by  WEGO-ITN. The two-day event will be held online on Zoom on the 1st and 2nd of July from 16:00 to 18:00 CEST. Since this is an international event, translation from English into German and Indonesian Bahasa will be provided.

Food production and supply has changed dramatically over the past few decades, contributing to unjust processes of production and distribution of food around the world. The global food industry is also closely interrelated with climate change. In addition, the homogenising effects of factory farming and monocultures mean that regional suppliers find it increasingly difficult to participate in food markets. These inter-related concerns make the need for alternative forms of agriculture and food consumption ever more visceral. The aim of the FPE Dialogues is to share insights from ongoing research projects and engagements with alternative food and economic practices in Indonesia, India and Germany; with the hope to stimulate conversation about what constitutes “alternative” agriculture or food consumption and why it matters.

The keynote speaker for the first day will be Dr Parto Teherani-Krönner. She will speak about her concept of ‘meal cultures’ and its relevance in re-thinking the multiple layers of food relations. We very much look forward to welcoming her to Passau via zoom, and hope to see some of you there.

Day 1
Dr Parto Teherani-Krönner on ‘Meal Cultures’
Followed by questions and discussion with the audience
16.00-18.00 CEST

Day 2
Roundtable on Re-thinking Food
Dimas Dwi Laksmana, Patrick Keilbart, Marlene Gómez Becerra, Siti Maimunah and Enid Still
16.00-18.00 CEST

Presenters will share perspectives from research on organic agriculture in Indonesia, community kitchens in Berlin, the relationship between food security and coal extraction in Indonesia and agricultural collectives in India.

The roundtable will then reflect with the audience on questions of inclusivity and the meaning of alternative in food systems.

 

Information provided by: Passau University

We are running behind the farmers: mapping food, knowledge and care in Chennai, the peri-urban and beyond

In the city of Chennai, Restore, an established non-profit organic food store, has been working closely with and for farmers for over ten years. More than a ‘shop,’ this organisation has networks and connections that extend to both local farmers and farmers as far away as Bangalore and Ooty. These networks are not simple supply chains but flows where food, knowledge and care move back and forth between the urban, the rural and the spaces in between. 

To bring visibility to these flows, the farmers, the knowledge and the caring practices involved in building such connections, we are exploring the possibility of a collaborative counter-cartography project.

Following the work of Kollectiv Organgotango+ and contributors to the book ‘This is Not an Atlas’ (2018), the project adopts the term ‘counter-cartography’ to describe what will be a process of mapping human and more-than-human food relations and thus, making visible flows of knowledge and care in and around Chennai. Such flows or embodied connections of food, knowledge and care often obscured by positivist and capitalist representations of food networks and supply chain mappings. 

The first aim of the project is to give consumers who shop at Restore more information and understanding about their food and where it comes from, thus making visible the farmer, their labour and their knowledge. The second aim is to challenge the dominant processes and conceptions of capital market flows by demonstrating: (1) the mutual flows of knowledge between farmers and traders, (2) the care networks that are constituted between farmers and traders that disrupt market norms and (3) the caring relations that exist between humans and more-than-humans across urban and rural landscapes. The ‘map’ will intersect with the Tamil seasonal farming calendar to demonstrate and make visible the dynamic and circular flows of food, knowledge and care moving within space and through time.


This project note is part of my ongoing research with farmers and traders in Chennai, India. It was proposed and discussed with activists at Restore in Chennai a few days before I had to leave India due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is therefore still very tentative and has not moved beyond this first discussion in early March 2020. We are also in the process of translating the note into Tamil to share with farmers and other activists in and around Chennai.

Despite being at this very early and uncertain stage I wanted to share this with the WEGO network and other interested scholars working in collaboration with activist networks and using participatory mapping to invite feedback and reflections.
Enid Still

Flower farmers in a dry land

Irene Leonardelli recently defended her research proposal at lHE Delft

Her research entitled ‘Flower Farmers in a Dry Land: A feminist ethnography of agrarian change and water flows in Maharashtra, India’ focuses on how farmers in the rural areas of Maharashtra, in India, are responding to, experiencing or even escaping processes of agrarian restructuring and water re-allocation provoked by the intensification of agriculture. More specifically, she is studying how the shift from subsistence to commercial farming is modifying tenure and labour relations, consumption and migration patterns as well as people’s experiences of and relations to their environment. Moreover, she is interested in analysing, from a feminist critical perspective, how far-away people, places and natures become connected through (physical and virtual) flows of water implied in the commodity chain of high-value crops. In her research, tracing these connections means assessing their implications for modalities and scales of water governance, but also reflecting on potential transnational feminist collaborations that can contribute to more equitable and sustainable socionatural futures.

Best Wordpress Gallery Plugin

All photos: Sharmini Bisessar

Reflecting on the intersections between water flows and people flows

At the moment I am doing my secondment at SOPPECOM, an NGO based in Pune (India). SOPPECOM is committed to support the most disadvantaged and marginalized sections of the population – especially women, dalits, landless in the rural area of Maharashtra- promoting practices of sustainable use of land and water resources, collaborating with grassroots groups and conducting research and advocacy work. I am learning a lot from their work and their experiences, especially from their action research programmes. At the same time, they are helping me developing my PhD research and collecting preliminary data.

Gerberas cultivated in poly houses in Pune. Photo: Irene Leonardelli

With my research I focus on floricultures to disentangle processes of agrarian restructuring and water re-allocation provoked by the intensification of agriculture in Maharashtra, from a feminist critical perspective. Currently, I am trying to map the floricultural landscape of Maharashtra, learning about farming practices and water sources and uses, the history of this business and the values and symbols attached to flowers.

A woman farmer showing the marigolds she cultivates in open fields, in her village close to Pune. Photo: Irene Leonardelli

I am reflecting on the intersections between water flows and people flows, about gendered labour relations and consumption patterns, about all the different stories and voices that compose this reality… how to make sense and co-narrate all of this, in a self-reflective, non-extractive way? Many threads tangling in my mind: it is challenging but also very fascinating and inspiring…

* Irene Leonardelli‘s research topic is Virtual water flows: re-articulating gendered structures of accumulation along emerging agro-food commodity chains in Maharashtra, India.