Format/Structure

Apart from paper presentations we welcome video presentations and other expressions of river movements.

Long Abstract

Rivers are socionatures that entwine as simultaneously social, physical, and symbolic entities. They are entangled human and non-human communities that define and depend on each other, in profoundly political ways. Capitalist and deeply exploitative river-configurations rapidly proliferate, colonizing political-economic realities of rivers. The watery worlds of the Anthropocene are under threat, bloated with floods, gasping with drought, and sickened with pollutants. River flows are increasingly monitored, predicted, regulated and redesigned through advanced technological control and digital-twin hydrological models, and thus turned into industrial-entrepreneurial ‘cyborg rivers’. As watery worlds face increasing threats, there is an urgent need to re-imagine, re-politicize and revitalise these relations, (re)framing water as a source of vibrant life rather than a resource ripe for extraction. This panel centres imaginative and emerging relations between humans and rivers. Although heavily affected, rivers move people emotionally, socially and politically. All over the world river-defense movements struggle for restoration, reimagination and reconfiguration of hydrosocial territories: human and non-human communities together forming Riverhood movements. This panel will share stories gathered through embodied, creative methodologies, deep engagements with place, and political battles. These stories will illuminate a plurality of relations between rivers, nonhumans and people, exploring how people challenge capitalist socionatural entanglements, for example through the River Thames swimmers, stewardship movements such as Rights of Rivers, defense against extractivism, and accessibility efforts such as ‘daylighting’ urban rivers. This panel will unfurl the complexities and interrogate the implications of revitalising relations between people and rivers, critically examining their potential to shift human perspectives of multispecies watery worlds and foster social and environmental justice. In some regions river-movements form strong and locally rooted multi-scalar networks. An example is the New Water Culture Foundation (FNCA) in Spain and Portugal. Similar river movements exist worldwide. The panel will feature these and other examples of river movements.-

This Panel has 13 pending paper proposals.
Propose paper