The Household Water Researchers Network is pleased to announce the first call for papers for

Tapping the Turn: A Conference on Water’s Social Dimensions.

This international conference to be held at the Australian National University (ANU) Canberra, Australia on November 15-16, 2012, offers a rare opportunity to present your research and professional work in an international forum dedicated entirely to social and cultural water research.

In recent years, social scientists have imagined ‘social natures’ - naturecultures and natural-technical and sociotechnical assemblages - where nature is not autonomous of human endeavour and human agency and all elements of the environment are understood to imbue, and be imbued by, human cultural activity.

In the modern expert view of water, this vital and physical ‘resource’ has become an exploitable commodity, heroically engineered to supply urban citizens living far from its source. This worldview posited a fundamental separation between the natural realm of water and the social contexts within which it is used, represented and controlled. Modernity has robbed water of its history and geography, severed people’s connections with sources of a vital natural element and constrained our imaginative capacities to learn and ‘think with’ water.

In spite of that dominant worldview, a revolution in the way people know and represent water is underway. A growing body of literature suggests that ‘water is what we make of it’: its meanings go well beyond scientific definitions.

THEMES
Papers submissions are particularly welcome that address the following themes:
a) Living with Water - City, country, farm, home, body, spirit
Household water use; rural and remote issues; cultural meanings and spiritual values of water; water and well-being.
b) Water Geographies, Histories and Futures - Tracing, writing, mapping, modelling
Water heritage; integrated and participatory water planning; site-specific water management.
c) Water Security and Insecurity - The hydropolitics of fear
Social aspects of water sustainability; demand management planning; predictability, unpredictability and complexity.
d) Water Genders, Cultures, Politics - Water governance inside and outside the home.
Different cultural meanings; gendered water use; masculinity, femininity, water governance.

For more information including full submission requirements, please visit www.tappingtheturn.org

Key Dates
Fri February 24, 2012
• Abstract Submission Deadline
Mon April 9, 2012
• Notification of submission outcome
Mon April 30, 2012
• Registration opens
Fri August 31, 2012
• Paper and poster final papers and presenter biographies due
• Deadline for presenter registration (poster and oral)
• End of early bird discount period

Please direct all enquiries to info@tappingtheturn.org

Or call
Kate Harriden,
Tapping the Turn steering committee co-ordinator;
New Flows Research;
Australian National University Canberra
+61 2 6100 3608