Hydro-heritage for healing? Examining the gendered experience of water in post-conflict Swat, Pakistan

Bibliographic Data

ID4464857
AuthorsDaanish Mustafa (0000-0002-1637-3763, King's College London, corresponding author), Muhammad Salman Khan (0000-0001-9909-0883, King's College London), Helmut De Nardi (Western Sydney University), James Caron (0000-0003-4785-3716, SOAS University of London), Arab Naz (0000-0002-1498-6929, University of Malakand), Mohsin Ullah (0000-0001-6094-380X, Quaid-i-Azam University), Aneela Gul (University of Malakand)
Year2024
Volume7
Issue2
Pages498-516
Publication date2024-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning E Nature and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2514-8486 • E-ISSN: 2514-8494
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/25148486231203854
OpenAlexW4387100544
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited50

Water has been formulated as a resource or a hazard within water resources geography. We propose that reframing of water as hydro-heritage opens up richer analytical possibilities for examining the pluriverses and multiple ontologies that animate gendered experience of water. We are concerned with how hydro-heritage has or could have contributed to healing in the post-conflict Swat valley of Pakistan. We highlight how the Taliban insurgency and the reconstruction following its military defeat displaced people's worlds of meaning in Swat. We find that the pre-conflict mountain springs were a site for an enchanted affective encounter between humans and non-humans, where a multifaceted gendered experience of water was enacted. The developmental imaginaries of the Pakistan state in the post-conflict reconstruction phase and the accompanying social changes deracinated water and springs from their pluriversal moorings towards 'modern water' with damaging material and emotional consequences for the people of Swat. This was particularly pronounced in terms of gendered access to water, health and mobility. We suggest that water as hydro-heritage has the potential to heal, provided people's worlds of meaning and experience of water are recentred in developmental imaginaries

Cognitive reframing · Hazard · Meaning (existential · Political science · Sociology · Water resources · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Psychology · Social Psychology · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Ecology

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