*CfP POLLEN2020 - Contested Waters and Fluid Properties in Capitalist
Natures*
Third Biennial Conference of the Political Ecology Network (POLLEN 20)
Contested Natures: Power, Possibility, Prefiguration
Brighton, United Kingdom
24-26 June 2020
*Key words: *Political ecologies of water, materialities of water,
Plantationocene
*Session organisers: *Camelia Dewan (University of Oslo), Knut G Nustad
(University of Oslo)
Please send your abstract of 250 words by Monday 18th November (17 CET) to
[log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] We will respond to
submissions by 20th November.
*Session Description*
While much has been written about enclosure of land for conservation as
well as exploitation, much less has been written about enclosures of water
worlds, both river systems and oceanic. For oceans, the term “ocean
grabbing” has been used to describe these enclosures as actions, policies
or initiatives that deprive small-scale fishers of resources, dispossess
vulnerable populations of coastal lands, and/or undermine historical access
to areas of the sea (Barbesgaard 2018; McCormack 2017), but similar
enclosures also take part in fresh water worlds.
For enclosures of these kinds on land, the concept of the *Plantationocene* has
been proposed for ‘the devastating transformation of diverse kinds of
human-tended farms, pastures, and forests into extractive and enclosed
plantations, relying on slave labor and other forms of exploited,
alienated, and usually spatially transported labor’ (Haraway 2015). While
the term succeeds in displacing universal man, and making visible
(racialised) power relations and economic, environmental and social
inequalities in the ruins of global capitalism, its focus retains a bias
toward land.
Unlike land, water is not a fixed property, nor does it have fixed
properties. The fluid qualities that enable water to connect, means that it
can also be a major medium for pollution and a threat when overly abundant.
And, being essential to all productive processes, it can readily become a
means of control and domination (Krause and Strang 2013).
Water is integral for the production of capitalist natures. At the same
time, contested waters highlight how it is (mis)used and inadvertently at
the receiving end of the toxic flows of capitalist extraction in ways that
threaten liveability of our very planet. What, then the session asks, does
the qualities of water matter to processes of plantation-making, the
production of capitalist natures, on the 70 percent of the globe covered by
water?
Bringing together political ecologies of water with environmental
ethnographies focusing on the materialities of water, we welcome
contributions that discuss to what extent, if at all, the Plantationocene
can be useful in theorising contested waters with its fluid properties.
*We invite papers that address one of the following, or related, questions:*
· How does the nature of water enable or hinder its translation as a
resource?
· How does the flow of water distinguish it from other resources?
· How are processes of scaling up different in aquatic and land-based
enclosures?
· How is property in landscapes marked by flow and movement different
from property rights in land?
· In what ways do water act both as commodity and as a means of
production?
· Can fisheries/other mono aquacultures be scaled in the same way as
other plantation systems?
· What are the restrictions of the Plantationocene in conceptualising
capitalist modes of production dependent on, and situated alongside,
waterbodies (such as factories, shipbuilding/breaking yards, mines) and
their toxic entanglements with [aquatic] livelihoods?
· What are the limits of Marxist theory of property rights in
capturing contemporary processes of the production of capitalist water
worlds?
Depending on the number of paper submissions, we may propose this session
as a three-hour workshop.
If you have any other questions, please do get in touch with us.
Best wishes
Camelia and Knut
*References*
Bakker, Karen. 2012. ‘Water: Political, Biopolitical, Material’. *Social
Studies of Science* 42 (4): 616–23.
Barbesgaard, Mads. 2018. ‘Blue Growth: Savior or Ocean Grabbing?’ *The
Journal of Peasant Studies* 45 (1): 130–49.
Budds, Jessica, Jamie Linton, and Rachael McDonnell. 2014. ‘The Hydrosocial
Cycle’.
*Geoforum* 57 (November): 167–69
Haraway, Donna 2015. 'Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene,
Chthulucene: Making Kin' . *Environmental Humanities, *vol. 6, 2015, pp.
159-165.
Krause, Franz, and Veronica Strang. 2013. ‘Introduction to Special Issue:
“Living Water”’. *Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology* 17
(2): 95–102.
McCormack, Fiona. 2017. *Private Oceans: The Enclosure and Marketisation of
the Seas*. London: Pluto Press.
--
Camelia Dewan
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Social Anthropology
University of Oslo
--
[log in to unmask]
https://www.sv.uio.no/sai/english/people/aca/camelid/
+46 739161702
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