ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Plural Epistemologies and The Role of Time in the History of Waterscapes

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

This panel offers four visions of the interconnections between time and scientific knowledge that inform human engagements with waterscapes. We are especially interested in situations where differing epistemological understandings of the relationship and interplay of land and water may be in conflict or dialog. A common thread in these stories is how ideas about time become vital to shaping the engagements between epistemologies and for advocating for particular uses and meanings of the waterscape. We explore cases of agricultural and energy waterscapes in Mexico, North America, Southeast Asia, and New Zealand in which reimaginations of water, land, and the relationship between them pivot on the engagement between multiple epistemological perspectives. Whether such epistemological differences act as barriers and sources of loss, or as energy fueling intriguing, if imperfect, forms of collaboration, each story shows how temporality (of techniques, knowledge, or the waterscapes themselves) mediates these encounters.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Suzanne Moon, University of Oklahoma

Individual Presentations

• Drying the Paddy Fields: Temporality and Epistemic Transformations in Climate Adaptation - Suzanne Moon, University of Oklahoma

• Deep Time: Mātauranga, Temporality, and the Geologies of Geothermal Things - Nathan Narain Kapoor, Illinois State University

• Boggy Sciences: Peatland Studies in the Early 20th Century United States - Cecilia Slane, University of Oklahoma

• Agroecological Muck-raking: Swamp Farming the Neo-Chinampas of Southern Mexico, 1975-1989 - Paul Vieth, University of Oklahoma