Water and Care — Working Papers Seminar

Date: 9/7/2026

Time: 9:00-10:30 AM ET

Location: Online

Organized by: Riikka Prattes (RCGE Advisory Board member)

Geneviève Minville is a PhD Candidate in Geography at York University (Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change). She holds a Master’s Degree in International Development and Globalization and a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work. Her work focuses on migration and mobility in the context of climate and environmental change and disasters, feminist political ecology, and sand extraction.

Sand, Water, and Everyday Narratives of Care in Post-Pinatubo Coastal Communities 

This working paper explores how coastal residents in Zambales, Philippines, make sense of slow- and rapid-onset socioenvironmental change, as lahar-laden rivers, shoreline accretion and large-scale dredging, embedded in development projects, reshape their everyday lives. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with fisherfolk, resort owners, and residents of Botolan and San Felipe, the paper examines people’s relationships to water and sand across shifting material and temporal sandscapes, from before the 1991 eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, through decades of lahar deposition flows amplified by typhoon risks, to recent large-scale dredging operations marked by a lack of transparency.  

Rivers and the sea emerge as central to people’s stories: they are tied to their livelihoods and to deep attachment to place, while serving as witnesses and indicators of environmental decline and transformation. Interviewees describe the physical and emotional impacts of the volcanic eruption and dredging, as well as the cumulative effects of disasters, including disrupted sleep, anxiety, fear, and respiratory difficulties. Their stories also recall coastlines once abundant in fish, tourism, and community life, while revealing divergent experiences shaped by class, gender, and age. 

I approach these narratives through a broad understanding of care that includes ecological concern, place-based attachment, and the everyday work of maintaining life amid uncertainty. Care appears not only in intentional environmental action, such as participation in protests, but also in expressions of love for the sea and land, and in desires to protect them for future generations. By foregrounding these situated stories, the paper contributes to conversations on water, care, and coastal change in contexts shaped by both natural hazards and extractive interventions.

Marta Gentilucci is an anthropologist. She is Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology and she leads the project OCEAN-MINeD. Oceanic presence in deep-sea mining: how the sea co-produces situational knowledges and practices.

In the Darkness of the Arctic: Politics and Technologies of (Un)Knowability and Extractability

Based on ethnographic research conducted during two scientific cruises aboard a Norwegian icebreaker and research vessel in late 2025, this chapter examines the politics and technologies of (un)knowability and extractability in the Arctic deep sea. The expeditions took place at a politically significant moment, as Norway debated the potential opening of parts of its seabed to deep-sea mining while the Arctic is increasingly seen as both a vulnerable ecosystem requiring protection and a strategic frontier for energy security and resource governance. The chapter shows how the deep-sea science is deeply entangled with competing political, economic, and environmental agendas. Scientific knowledge contributes both to the governance and protection of marine environments and to the assessment of their extractive potential. As a result, what becomes visible, knowable, and worthy of investigation is shaped not only by scientific inquiry but also by funding priorities, regulatory frameworks, and geopolitical interests. Technologies such as remotely operated vehicles, sensors, mapping systems, and sampling devices play a central role in these processes by rendering certain aspects of the deep sea visible while leaving others in darkness. At the same time, the production of knowledge is not determined solely by political and technological factors. Oceanic conditions—including currents, pressure, temperature, sea ice, darkness, and weather—actively shape scientific practice and delimit what can be observed, sampled, and known. Through an analysis of the everyday practices of scientists, engineers, artists, crew members, and ship officers, the chapter explores how different forms of expertise, care, and engagement with the ocean emerge through distinct technologies and responsibilities. It argues that the Arctic deep sea is actively constituted as an object of knowledge, governance, protection, and potential extraction, revealing how (un)knowability and extractability are co-produced.