Global liquid: Unravelling the sociopolitical construction of waterscapes in Finland and Cameroon

Hakemuksen tiivistelmä

This research project is a theoretical and empirical foray into the making of waterscapes in times of global climate change. It focuses on two case studies: the city of Nokia in Finland and the city of Yagoua in Cameroon. Drawing on existing debates in political ecology, development studies and urban anthropology, this project examines local public policies, community experiences and practices against the backdrop of water-related hardships such as floods or droughts, drinking water scarcity and contaminations leading to waterborne epidemics. It excavates the divisive sociopolitical impacts of global trends such as climate change on everyday livelihoods and practices by analysing waterscapes as contested landscapes structured by flows of capital, money and power. The project approaches hydropolitics from a comparative perspective and look at global waterscapes as forming a discontinuous single site. In doing so, the project simultaneously documents the global convergence of waterscapes shaped by climate change and the fragmentation of the infrastructural landscapes leading to increased makeshifts and improvisational tactics devised by local communities to cope with the contemporary water-related harships. The project will then contribute to informing the power dynamics shaping global waterscapes. Such dynamics are linked, for example, to the uneven economic development, public policies and practices that widen global (North-South) and local (centre-periphery) inequalities. Methodologically, the project will involve ethnographic fieldwork in Nokia and Yagoua, as well as research exchanges with two institutions in the Chad-Cameroon borderland.