​​Events

2022

Lecture: Aquifers and Ethnography at the Edge of a Concept

22.06.2022, Andrea Ballestero (University of Southern California): Aquifers: Ethnography and Responsibility at the Edge of a Concept

Imagining what life will become in the near future, public officials and community members on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast are coming together to take responsibility for underground water worlds. In the process they oscillate between two concepts: groundwater and aquifers. Groundwater efficiently conveys a sense of water as a fungible unit that can be exchanged, banked, or spent. In contrast, the figure of the aquifer activates a grounded concept whereby land, liquid, and history are inseparable. In this talk, I query how people move from groundwater to aquifers, and back. I ask what are the stakes of doing so, and what kind of responsibility for subterranean water worlds are possible in that movement? More broadly, I examine what happens to responsibility when people live and act at the edge of a concept?