Keywords
counter-mapping
hydrosocial territories
place of resistance
Abstract
This paper examines how rural communities in the middle Yanuncay River basin in the southern Ecuadorian Andes construct and mobilise a sense of place in response to extractive and territorial threats. In this study, the notion of sense of place is articulated through the collective process of ‘mapping otherwise,’ since it is through the map that this sense of place becomes materially and visually manifested. Combining participatory workshops, ethnographic engagement, artist-scholar-activist actions, and research-by-drawing, we engaged with rural communities along the middle Yanuncay River to articulate and visualise their emotional, material, and symbolic relationships with the riverine environment. Based on this experience, we show how mapping otherwise can be a place-making practice in which communities strategically (re)articulate different dimensions of sense of place (attachment, identity and dependence) in response to existing territorial threats. We advance that articulating this sense of place in contexts of territorial threats can best be grasped through the notion of place of resistance. This notion recognises explicitly that local notions of sense of place are deeply transformed in response to territorial conflict and that their articulation and visualisation can become an important tool for their political struggle and an instrument of territorial defence.
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