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Guest-curated dossier

Title: Extracting Bodies of Water: Gender and Political Ecology

Editors: Tomaz Amorim (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Henriette Gunkel (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Dzifa Torvikey (University of Ghana)

Abstract: The thematic issue explores extractivism as an intertwined aesthetic, ethico-political, and socio-environmental phenomenon. Moving beyond traditional material and economic analyses, it investigates the deeply gendered dimensions of extraction, with a specific focus on different bodies of water and lifeworld.  By bringing together artivists, cultural scholars, and activists, the issue adopts a transdisciplinary approach to render visible the long-term bodily, socio-political, and ecological impacts of extractive practices. Highlighting diverse case studies—from cocoa plantations, extractive debt, and salt harvesting in Ghana, land ownership and land use in South Africa to the implications of overfishing in The Gambia, and the rivers of Brazil—the collection centers critical feminist perspectives and indigenous knowledge systems to address the often-overlooked immaterial and memorial impacts of resource extraction.

Descriptive Summary: The proposed thematic issue for the Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad de Costa Rica—edited by Tomaz Amorim, Henriette Gunkel, and Gertude Dzifa Torvikey—aims to establish a critical, transdisciplinary dialogue on the multifaceted impacts of extractivism in relation to different water bodies. Inspired by the creative work of artists and scholars, the special issue will attend to the ways in which extractive infrastructures are perceived, made legible, and resisted. A central thesis of the issue is that extractivism is fundamentally a gendered system. The contributions will explore how the extraction of resources affect different bodies of water—ranging from deep-sea mining and overfishing to inland mining that relies heavily on water resources—disproportionately affects the bodies and livelihoods of women. Furthermore, the issue seeks to highlight the "memorialization capacity" of water, examining how ecological disasters, tailings dam leakages, and acid mine drainage leave irreversible, toxic traces in rivers, oceans, and groundwater. By analyzing specific geographical contexts of the embodied ecological histories of extraction in Ghana, The Gambia, South Africa, Brazil and Australia, the issue will bridge African and Indigenous knowledge systems with critical feminist and decolonial frameworks. Ultimately, this collection will provide a collaborative, transdisciplinary space to challenge the traditionally masculine and purely material scholarship on extractivism, offering new ways to understand the intersection of gender, water, land access and environmental justice.