In this Political Ecology seminar, Jennifer Langill draws on feminist political ecology to consider where water 'should be' and 'should sometimes be'.
- Date
- Tuesday 12 Nov 2024, 13:00 - 14:00
- Type
- Seminar
- Spoken Language
- English
- Room
- Room 4.26
- Location
- International Institute of Social Studies
In this era of profound environmental change and destructive environmental hazards, much of the media and academic discussion focuses on where water 'should not be' - referring to extreme flood events and their implications for social-environmental systems.
In this seminar, Dr Jennifer Langill (University of Bristol, UK) draws on feminist political ecology to expand this dialogue to consider where water 'should be' and 'should sometimes be'. She illustrates her research with two case studies.
In the first, she examines ethnic minority livelihoods in the highlands of northern Thailand, where ethnic Hmong are struggling to maintain viable livelihoods with growing concerns of water scarcity. Draw on historical environmental knowledges, she questions where water 'should be' - but is not.
Second, she considers the Peruvian Amazon, where long-standing floodplain-based livelihoods rely on the annual flood cycle to sustain livelihood and riverine lifeways. However, the increased prevalence of irregularities in the flood pulse are shifting the height, duration and timing of the annual flood, generating new questions of human-environment relations in this setting where water ‘should sometimes be’.
Drawing on these two distinct cases, she discusses how pressing anthropogenic concerns are changing perspectives and experiences of where water 'should be', 'should not be’ and ‘should sometimes be’. She argues that beyond the materialities of water presence (or absence), environmental change is also shaping the expectations in human-water relations.
About the speaker
Jennifer Langill is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol.
Her work falls at the intersection of feminist geographies and critical development, drawing on feminist approaches to livelihoods and political ecology. She is specifically interested in the relationships between social and political marginalization, livelihood activities, and individual lifeworlds.
Her current research project questions the relationality and intersectionality of rural-urban migration in northern Laos.
Prior to joining the University of Bristol, she completed her PhD in Geography at McGill University. Her doctoral research examined intergenerational livelihood transitions for Hmong populations in northern Thailand, and the socially differentiated outcomes of these political economic and environmentally driven changes.
Her first publication from this research was recently published in Gender, Place & Culture as a part of a special issue co-edited by Jennifer titled ‘Towards Feminist Geographies of Livelihoods’
