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Contribution short abstract:

This paper applies the ethno-graphy method in mapping changing temporal trajectories surrounding Kolkata’s wastewaterscape, and discusses the novelty of the method in forging interactive collaborative governance to protect nature-culture heritage (SDG 11.4).

Contribution long abstract:

Recent water studies in the global south, despite their thorough documentation and critical historical and socio-ecological analysis over the years, remain fragmented and limited as a result of the continued separation of disciplinary methods and lack of long-term and action-based academia-stakeholder collaboration. We propose the application of the Ethno-graphy method that integrates mainstream ethnography/qualitative techniques and archival research with visual-graphical representations accommodating plural perspectives and aspirations of researchers, inhabitants as well as policymakers in reimagining urban nature towards more just and solution-oriented conjectures.

Our story focuses on the heritage wastewaterscape of Kolkata, the East Kolkata Wetlands, a historically contested space that has evolved across interactions of colonial hydrology and social indigenous practices and intra-actions among more-than-human enactments (coliform bacteria, water hyacinth, algae, fishes etc.). The application of the transdisciplinary Ethno-graphy lens in this region, deployed through academia-practitioner alliance, captures the historicity as well as everyday spatialities and non-linear storylines of multispecies risks, resilience and wellbeing in the wetlands. The transgression of these disciplinary boundaries, from mulidisciplinarity to transdisciplinarity, offers to expand the explorative ambit of environmental history in terms of more viable methodological design through inclusive epistemologies, transitioning to an engaged praxis for a desirable Anthropocene.