Plumbing the Depths: Towards a Deeper Understanding of Groundwater

Session Submission Type: Complete Panel

Abstract

Amidst a sea of watery scholarship, groundwater remains undertheorized and under-studied. Fossil-fuel-driven technologies have only recently made it possible for humans to significantly alter the subterranean waterscape, while difficulties related to access and observation continue to complicate the development of hydrogeological knowledge. Perhaps because of such difficulties, and its relatively late incorporation into modern water management schemes, groundwater has received little attention from environmental historians and ethnographers—leading to a dearth of theoretical perspectives on this vital resource. This panel seeks to address this lacuna, bringing together research from disparate locations to suggest three new conceptual understandings of groundwater. Victoria Nguyen shows how groundwater management through China’s recent “Sponge City” initiative has contributed to a new understanding of urban space as a total environment encompassing the aerial, terrestrial, and subterranean realms. Alaa Attiah explores the use of shallow aquifers by Bedouin herders in South Sinai, defining groundwater as “a source of sovereign power” that contrasts sharply with the Egyptian state’s national and regional strategies for water management. Finally, Sarah Hamilton conceptualizes groundwater as “shadow water,” drawn from the pores and fissures of permeable rock and exported around the world in physical or virtual form through the movements of internationally-traded commodities. All three papers contextualize groundwater within the ongoing climate crisis, in which the scarcity and/or irregularity of surface waters has rendered subterranean reserves increasingly crucial to urban, industrial, and agricultural users. These conditions underline the urgency of understanding groundwater and its role in past and present human societies.

Sub Unit

• ASEH Annual Conference

Individual Presentations

• Where water, land and air meet: Elemental Edges and the New Chinese City - Victoria Nguyen, Amherst College

• Sinai Aquifer: Politics, scales and poetics - Alaa Attiah, University of Toronto

• Groundwater as Shadow Water: From Aquifers to Markets - Sarah Hamilton, University of Bergen