Living Water: An Audio-Visual Exploration of Social Polarization through Water as more-than-human Agent in Jordan

A progressive extremification of climatic patterns significantly contributes to shortage of water in the Middle East. In Jordan the society goes through the intersectional transformation that entails the adoption of neoliberal policies and the recognition of climate change impacts, which might, eventually, be both distributed unequally.
In this light, the research intends to empirically explore how water in terms of technology and social practices shapes inequalities of climate change adaptation in everyday life of people in Jordan. A qualitative approach of social anthropology will take a cue from the recent developments in Western cultural theory – Anthropocene scholarship – willing to reposition mankind’s planetary self-awareness beyond a well-established distinction of Nature and Culture. The challenge at hand is to devise more-than-human Anthropocenic theorizing with apt methodological grounding and provide more-than-textual multimedia engagements with climate change. As such the final PhD project will consist of collaboratively created ethnographic film, written thesis, sound installation and interactive website.
While “seeing from the water” the research aims to contribute to the understanding of how the climate change awareness affects water-related socio-cultural practices and how lack of water structures subjectivities of marginalized population in the Middle East. Subsequently, being grounded in the fields of sound art, philosophy, human geography and social anthropology, it will empirically and theoretically foster the emerging transdisciplinary scholarship on Anthropocene.