Nicholas Bourguignon
The research project aims to present an understanding of the naturecultures of water sketching the different layers of political intervention in infrastructural planning and spatial development in Europe. This will build awareness of the complicated entanglements of social, cultural and economic factors influencing the governance of water. The research project will explore water use, planning and governance from a feminist political ecology, queer ecology and body politics lens. These approaches will help analyze and question multiple regimes of power dynamics as seen through gender, water resources, environments and landscapes, and political dimensions. Fieldwork will take place in Spain. The ESR will explore communities that are in river basins that either have water extracted to or receive water from other basins as part of the Spanish National Hydrological Plan. Here, political contestations for and against the Plan will be explored, and how this contestation is given meaning at different scales. My interest is to see how care can be an organizing principle for social and environmental struggles at different scales and dimensions. Fieldwork will be based on a mixed methods approach, but relying on qualitative tools such as participatory action research and some ethnographic methods such as semi-structured interviews, participatory reflection and action, and mapping.