Food and water are perhaps the principal means through which people interact with nature. For this reason, they offer insight into a wide range of social and environmental processes that shape our world. Our research on food and water is informed by a broad range of theoretical approaches from political ecology, infrastructure studies, science & technology studies, material cultures, and postcolonialism.
Niranjana’s research on coastal ecologies in southeastern India traces the connections between food and water through the work of artisanal fishers operating in the nearshore, estuaries and marshes of the city of Chennai and its hinterland. Tim Brown and Kavita Datta’s work explores the impacts of development interventions on nutrition and associated health-related outcomes for children living in rural and peri-urban Zimbabwe. Archie Davies’ research on the historical geography of urban mangroves in Northeastern Brazil explores the connections between colonial histories of landscape and epistemologies of nature. This work shows how the destruction of mangroves, mudflats and wetlands in Recife have been coextensive with processes of racialization in Brazil. Jeremy Schmidt’s work examines the historical and normative interactions of water management and social sciences (geography and anthropology, especially) and contemporary challenges ranging from water and energy challenges in unconventional fossil fuel extraction to new digital water technologies in India and elsewhere.