Agenda

CROSS CURRENTS | Workshop
Historical Waterscapes in Crosscultural Perspectives

Jena 5-7 July 2023

This workshop aims at a comparative study of historical waterscapes in different sites across the world by looking at the epistemological connection between cosmological and ecological knowledge in water-landscapes engineering.

Organized by Max Plank Institute of Geoanthropology / NICHE / Unesco Chair / FARE

This workshop aims at a comparative study of historical waterscapes in different sites across the world by looking at the epistemological connection between cosmological and ecological knowledge in water-landscapes engineering. The main goal is to study water heritage as an open-ended historical geo-anthropological process, comprehend the current conjuncture, marked by socio-ecological unbalances, and assess alternative pathways to a sustainable future. The water-cycle, seen from a historical and anthropological perspective should open up new meaningful pathways, which are apt to address the environmental crisis of the Anthropocene by crossdisciplinarily integrating the agendas of socio-hydrology and hydro-sociology.

Waterscapes transformation, especially through their constant engineering, aims to secure various social uses of water (access to drinkable water, agriculture, health, transportation, energy, defense, recreation), has always rested on complex forms of ecological, social and cosmological knowledge. Land surveying and cosmographic knowledge, including astronomy, have always played an entangled role, although the scientific activity of the agrimensor (or land surveyor) and the astronomer/cosmographer have often been segregated in accordance with epistemological and social divisions of labor. Medieval and early-modern India is a case in point, as the mathematical practices connected with astronomy and surveying were organized alongside caste and linguistic separations. In early-modern Europe, the practices of water management, hydrology, territory mapping and cosmological inquiry often merged, in line with political and economic drivers of productivity, control and efficiency. In early-modern Venice, cosmological knowledge constituted an essential basis for territory management and waterscapes architecture, as is witnessed by the scientific activity of the water officers of the Republic of Venice on matters as varied as territory mapping, tidal studies, and eco-hydraulic engineering (canalization, coastal areas interventions, lagoon management, fishing regulations). European early-modernity also witnessed to the rise of new mixed intellectual-practical professionals, in line with the requirements of a process of societal restructuring (marked by technological innovations, capital-oriented forms of investment, novel forms of land and labour valuation, and colonial expansion). In this context, of an increasingly interconnected modernity, the commonalities and specificities of water-and-territory scientific practices can only be understood through historical and comparative studies. The case of Mexico City, former Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, shows the parallel and different evolution of an island-city that has been transformed in a very different direction than Venice for different geoengineering and political decisions on the part of the Hispanic colonizers and the post-colonial engineers. More comparative studies are necessary: the socio-political history of Chinese rivers management ought to be carefully considered, too. This conference in historical geoanthropology aims to strengthen a productive interdisciplinary and crosscultural exchange among scholars on questions of environmental history, water heritage, and sustainable development. The theoretical framework will also be addressed. It addresses crucial questions of historical geo-anthropology, conceived of as an environmental development of historical and political epistemology.