Bodies of Water. Counter-Colonial Technologies, Tidal Knowledge, and Plural Futures

Dominant understandings of technology often privilege technoscientific innovation and formal infrastructures as universal expressions of progress. This session proposes a broader understanding of technology through the embodied, relational, and territorial practices developed within coastal, riverine, and lagoon communities. Bringing Science and Technology Studies (STS) into dialogue with body studies, counter-colonial thought, and plural epistemologies, the session explores how ancestral knowledge, ecological memory, tidal knowledge, and community infrastructures constitute technologies for sustaining life. We invite contributions that examine fishing knowledge, navigation practices, environmental stewardship, Indigenous and Afro-diasporic knowledge systems, community-based innovation, ecological repair, and alternative forms of governance emerging from water territories. Particular attention will be given to bodies of water and bodies in water as living infrastructures through which knowledge is transmitted, territories are inhabited, and collective futures are imagined. The session examines water territories as lived spaces through which knowledge, belonging, and collective futures are continuously produced, and welcomes contributions that explore how bodies, territories, and water-based knowledge systems challenge dominant understandings of technology, development, and sociocultural transformation, while opening pathways towards sociocultural-ecological sustainability.