Aquifers, Science, and Spatial Imaginaries

含水层、科学和空间想象

• 批准号: 2153960
• 负责人: Andrea Ballestero
• 金额: $ 45.56万
• 依托单位: University of Southern California
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-10-01 至 2025-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2153960&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Aquifers; Science; Spatial; Imaginaries

Despite remaining largely out of public view during the twentieth century, aquifers are emerging from their relative obscurity as governments invest considerable resources in scientific research and experiment with new governance models to face the looming global water crisis. This interdisciplinary research project investigates how, as aquifers gain more public attention, social life above the surface of the Earth intersects with the material world below it. The projects’ central research question examines how spatial imaginaries of the underground change when aquifers acquire a prominent place in the public sphere. With water becoming one of the most endangered resources globally, policy makers and experts increasingly understand the urgency of engaging local actors in aquifer protection. However, their ideas of who those actors are and how they conceptualize aquifers often assume single-issue representations of human experience. This project counterbalances those representations by investigating aquifers as spatial formations laden with cultural meaning.This research consists of a longitudinal, ethnographic, and multi-modal study of how increased circulation of scientific knowledge about aquifers recasts the relations between surface and subsurface, and reshapes the legal and cultural relations between property and environmental responsibility. The project investigates two recently created participatory aquifer management plans and focuses on the work that local residents, property owners, and public servants do to implement them. Specifically, the project (1) identifies the scientific ideas that circulate through participatory aquifer management plans, (2) documents how everyday citizens understand spatial features (surface and subsurface), (3) maps the projects through which participants enact their responsibility to protect aquifers, and (4) identifies the points of friction and the complementarities between demands to protect aquifers and the surface-based notions of property that participants hold. The project develops theoretical resources to conceptualize aquifers as more than water quantities waiting to be extracted. Methodologically, the project combines ethnographic research, data visualization techniques, and collaborative maping. Additionally, the project supports junior scholars with scientific training and professional mentoring.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

尽管在二十世纪基本上没有出现在公众视野中，但随着各国政府投入大量资源进行科学研究并尝试新的治理模式以应对迫在眉睫的全球水危机，含水层正在逐渐摆脱其相对默默无闻的地位。为了获得更多公众的关注，地球表面以上的社会生活与其之下的物质世界相交叉，该项目的中心研究问题是当含水层在公众中占据重要地位时，地下的空间想象会如何变化。随着水成为全球最濒危的资源之一，政策制定者和专家越来越认识到让当地行为者参与含水层保护的紧迫性，然而，他们对这些行为者是谁以及如何概念化含水层的看法往往呈现单一问题。该项目通过调查含水层作为充满文化意义的空间形态来平衡这些表征。这项研究包括纵向、人种学和多模式研究，探讨有关含水层的科学知识的流通增加如何重塑。该项目调查了最近制定的两个参与式含水层管理计划，并重点关注当地居民、业主和公务员为实施这些计划所做的工作。具体而言，该项目 (1) 通过参与式含水层管理计划审查的科学理念，(2) 记录普通公民如何空间特征（地表和地下），(3) 绘制项目图，参与者通过这些项目制定保护责任(4) 确定了保护含水层的要求与参与者所持有的基于地表的财产概念之间的摩擦点和互补性。该项目开发了理论资源，将含水层概念化为不仅仅是等待开采的水量。该项目结合了人种学研究、数据可视化技术和协作制图。此外，该项目还为初级学者提供科学培训和专业指导。该奖项是 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用评估被认为值得支持。基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

项目成果

Trusts at the financial frontier: the flickering forms of property, water, and governance

金融前沿的信托：财产、水和治理的忽隐忽现的形式

• DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2023.2176344
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Journal of Cultural Economy
• 影响因子: 1.9
• 作者: Ballestero, Andrea

Casual Planetarities: Choreographies, Resonance, and the Geologic Presence of People and Aquifers

偶然的行星：编排、共振以及人类和含水层的地质存在

• DOI: 10.1215/22011919-10746134
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Environmental Humanities
• 影响因子: 2.3
• 作者: Ballestero, Andrea