Paper short abstract:

Departing from a cross-disciplinary method that combines remote and near sensing this paper questions how the social practices and ways of being in the world are in close interplay with the geophysical characteristics and other physical-environmental features in southern Albania.

Paper long abstract:

In the contemporary world of digitalisation and developing technology, the big data are becoming an important asset and often a tool for various purposes. But what do these big data mean if they lack the social and cultural context? How are they interpreted when they are coupled and entangled with thick data of ethnographic research? Departing from a cross-disciplinary method that combines remote (based on big, remote sensing data) and near (based on thick, ethnographic data) sensing this paper questions how the social practices and ways of being in the world are in close interplay with the geophysical characteristics and other physical-environmental features in southern Albania. Here we depart from our long-standing research on the river Vjosa in southern Albania where we try to understand the multitude of entaglements between the social, cultural and geophisical riverine environment through the period of forty years. We question how the physical (e.g. erosion, deforestation), social and cultural characteristics and infrastructural interventions (e.g. hydropower plants, irrigation channels) are embedded in peoples' lives, and in turn how peoples' practices are spatialised in the landscape. This paper questions the delicate entanglement between social, geophysical, infrastructural and ecological dimensions. It delves into ways where remote and near sensing evolve and expand the methodology of research. Where and in what ways do remote and near, deep and shallow, visible and invisible, permeable and bounded mould and generate new horizons and potentialities?