Aquifer Aporias: Toward a Comparative Anthropology of Groundwater Depletion
- Autores: Lucas Bessire
- Localización: Current anthropology: A world journal of the sciences of man, ISSN 0011-3204, Nº. 3, 2022, págs. 350-359
- Idioma: inglés
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Resumen
This report extrapolates from prior research to propose a preliminary framework for approaching extreme groundwater depletion through anthropological analysis of what it terms aquifer aporias—the ecological manifestations of epistemic gaps about aquifer loss. Informed by two years of ethnographic research on aquifer depletion on the High Plains, the essay identifies how aporetic relationships among five overlapping epistemic modes drive extreme groundwater eradication across the Plains and other dry regions of the world. These modes include but are not limited to hydrogeological structures, economic rationalities, groundwater governance, technological remediation, and affective contours of belonging. The central argument is that planetary zones of depletion bear striking resemblances to each another in ways that allow and require comparative analysis. Grasping how extreme aquifer depletion coalesces as a general planetary phenomenon in turn requires bringing aporetic dynamics into a single analytic framework. Taking these mutually constitutive aporias seriously may also contribute to ongoing debates about the relationships of anthropological knowledge to the defining ecological crises of the contemporary.
