Call for Papers for the 115th Annual Meeting of the American
Anthropological Association
Water Crises: Catastrophe and Community

The majority of natural disasters worldwide are water-related, which
include water scarcity, drought, desertification, floods, mudslides,
storms, waterborne diseases and others. The impact of these disasters can
be immediate and devastating, or gradual and deceptive. This panel will
bring together crises of different temporalities and scales, which are
contextualised within the space of global climate change, human migration
and sustainability, in order to explore forms of resilience.

This panel looks comparatively at recent and historical instances of
water-related crisis; at the social and cultural meanings water-related
crises carry; and at the possibilities such crises hold for creating more
integrated visions of society in which principles of sustainable living are
upheld. The panel invites academics and practitioners to focus on the
creation of new and experimental social and cultural forms in relation to
water-related crises. By looking at the physical environment as it is
related to in everyday life and represented in public debates, the panel
will examine the social and cultural ways in which people creatively make
sense of and govern these processes as well as the forms of
community-making entailed in resilience.

We call for papers which contribute to the creation of a conceptual common
ground for studying and understanding water-related crises. We invite
participants to:

- Examine current and historical water-related crises within the larger
historical frameworks of natural and man-made disaster;
- Analyse the cultural components of water-related crises;
- Look at the communities that are created through such disasters;
- Critically assess the presumed capacity of flood, drought, and other
natural disasters to produce more sustainable models for collective living.

Please send your interest and an abstract of 250 words to Arvid van Dam (
[log in to unmask]) by Friday 8 April.
The panel will be co-convened by Marie Curie European Innovative Training
Network ENHANCE Fellows Sarah Elizabeth Yoho (University of Leeds) and
Arvid van Dam (University of Leeds).

Please note that presenters must be current members of the AAA unless
eligible for a membership exemption (anthropologists living outside of the
US/Canada or non-anthropologists). Both members and those with exemptions
must have paid registration for the 2016 Annual Meeting in order to upload
abstract information. Presenters must submit this information by 5:00pm EDT
(USA) 15 April 2016.

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