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Accepted Paper:

From the hydrologic to the hydrosocial cycle: a relational-dialectical approach to water  
Jessica Budds (University of East Anglia)

Paper short abstract:

The hydrosocial cycle is a means of theorizing and analyzing water-society relations. Unlike the hydrologic cycle, it attends to water’s social and political nature. We employ a relational-dialectical approach to show how water and society make and remake each other over space and time.

Paper long abstract:

The relationship between water and society has come to the forefront of critical inquiry in recent years, attracting significant scholarly and popular interest. As the state hydraulic paradigm gives way to modes of water governance, there is a need for alternative concepts of water that recognize, reflect and represent its broader social dimensions. In this paper, we define and mobilize the concept of the hydrosocial cycle as a means of theorizing and analyzing water-society relations. The hydrosocial cycle is based on the concept of the hydrologic cycle, but modifies it in important ways. While the hydrologic cycle has the effect of separating water from its social context, the hydrosocial cycle deliberately attends to water's inherently social and political nature. Through the hydrosocial cycle, we seek to transcend the dualistic categories of 'water' and 'society', and employ a relational-dialectical approach to demonstrate how they make and remake each other over space and time. We argue that unravelling this historical and geographical process of making and remaking offers analytical insights into the social construction and production of water, the ways by which it is made known, and the power relations that are embedded in hydrosocial change. While existing work within the political ecology tradition considers the co-constitution of water and power, particularly in relation to processes of capital accumulation, we propose the hydrosocial cycle as a broader framework for attending to the ontology and epistemology of water within hydrosocial relations, and for undertaking critical political ecologies of water.

Panel P50
The hydrologic cycle: thinking relationships through water
  Session 1