Event Description
Imagining what life will become in the near future, public officials and community members on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast are coming together to take responsibility for underground water worlds. In the process, they move across two different configurations: groundwater and aquifers. Each of these intensifies different forces, pushing and pulling everyday tasks in the direction of water extraction or an expansive understanding of matter and being. Andrea Ballestero examines these as two configurations that can flicker, changing the grounds of the possible quickly, although many times briefly. She examines these dynamics by looking at data collection and database maintenance at the intersection of community organizations and public agencies. From there, she theorize the configuration and its flickering qualities to understand how people use science to relate to subterranean water in the midst of a changing political, economic, and security environment.
Event Speaker
Andrea Ballestero, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Southern California.
Event Information
Open to Columbia University ID holders only. Please email Antara Chakrabarti at [email protected] to register. Please visit the Faculty House website for directions.
Hosted by the University Seminar in Ecology and Culture at Columbia University.
