Moving Rivers Webinar | Creating counter-narratives with local riverine communities in Thailand, Laos, and India
October 11 @ 15:00 - 16:30
This Moving Rivers Webinar, entitled ‘Creating counter-narratives with local riverine communities in Thailand, Laos, and India: Disentangling Multiple Realities’, will be taking place on October 11, 2024 / 15:00 – 16:30 CET time.
In this webinar session, Diana Suhardiman (KITLV) will build on the concept of institutional bricolage and place it in the context of hydropower development planning. Her presentation will focus on: 1) local community responses in Thailand and Laos, including how these are influenced by social movements; 2) how these responses are translated into collective action (or lack thereof); and 3) how local community strategies are embedded in the wider political context and different manifestations of state-citizen relations. Following these reflections, Sarita Bhagat will look at how neoliberal ways of managing rivers often result in marginalised riverine communities moving away from, or adapting to, new livelihoods. Drawing on ongoing work in the Warna river basin, the talk will focus on the changing relationship of fishing communities and farmers in relation to the development of dams and regulated river flows. The researcher uses counter-mapping and art-based methods to explore these relationships.