Heterotic water policy futures using place agency, vernacular knowledge, transformative learning and syncretic governance

Abstract

The interrelated existence of humanity and environment is made starkly apparent by the dire consequences forecast for both humans and the globe in the (proposed) Anthropocene epoch (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000; Crutzen, 2002). Delusions of human 'superiority' amidst human/non-human divisions have contributed to a collapse of Earth systems, and it is perhaps the ultimate irony that this may lead to our own demise at the hands of nature. As Latour (2014) has observed, 'through a complete reversal of Western philosophy's most cherished trope, human societies have resigned themselves to playing the role of dumb object, while nature has unexpectedly taken on that of the active subject!' (pp. 11-12). Several neologisms have been crafted in an attempt to describe humannature relationships beyond dualism, including envirosocial (Bartel et al., 2014 ), hydrosocial (Linton, 2010, 2014; Linton & Budds, 2014; Swyngedouw et al., 2002; Wilson, 2014), social-ecological (Eerkes et al., 2003; Folke et al., 2005), earth system science (Gifford et al., 2010), socionatures and naturecultures (see Haraway, 2008; White, 2006), as well as waterscapes (see Karpouzoglou and Vij, 2017). Such terms have arisen from the decentring of the human, particularly in environmental (especially ecocentric) research, and from the increasing recognition in the humanities of non-human agency, as well as the relational and new materialism turns in scholarship more broadly (see Castree & MacMillan, 2001).