Riverhood: political ecologies of socionature commoning and translocal struggles for water justice

Mega-damming, pollution and depletion endanger rivers worldwide. Meanwhile, modernist imaginaries of ordering ‘unruly waters and humans’ have become cornerstones of hydraulic-bureaucratic and capitalist development. They separate hydro/social worlds, sideline river-commons cultures, and deepen socio-environmental injustices. But myriad new water justice movements (NWJMs) proliferate: rooted, disruptive, transdisciplinary, multi-scalar coalitions that deploy alternative river–society ontologies, bridge South–North divides, and translate river-enlivening practices from local to global and vice-versa. This paper's framework conceptualizes ‘riverhood’ to engage with NWJMs and river commoning initiatives. We suggest four interrelated ontologies, situating river socionatures as arenas of material, social and symbolic co-production: ‘river-as-ecosociety’, ‘river-as-territory’, ‘river-as-subject’, and ‘river-as-movement’

Everyday practices, everyday water: From Foucault to Rivera-Cusicanqui (with a few stops in between)

In this article, we explore elements of the literature on practices and the everyday to provide reference points for water researchers. We cast a wide net in recognition of the complex and multifaceted nature of human relationships to water that cannot be reduced to a single perspective. The article begins with the work of prominent French theorists including Foucault, Lefebvre, Bourdieu and de Certeau. Each grapples with the interrelationship between wider socio-political processes and practice in different ways. This leads us to pragmatism and non-representational theory in the second section, which argue that to understand socio-political processes, one must begin from practices. In the third section, we engage with work on practices in conditions of instability and precarity, which are widespread under contemporary conditions of post-colonial neoliberalism, and the role of “care” in mitigating their effects. In section four, we discuss the scholarship and practice of Silvia Rivera-Cusicanqui, who explores and extends many of the approaches elaborated above. The article concludes with a reflection on what this means for engaging with the multiple realities and ways of living with water

Gobernanza del agua. Una mirada desde la ecología política y la justicia hídrica

La gobernanza del agua, en la actualidad, presenta notables retos en términos de equidad, justicia y sustentabilidad. Para poder abordar estos temas consideramos necesario entender los discursos, políticas y relaciones de poder que dan forma a los procesos de toma de decisiones e intervención, al manejo de la información y conocimientos y, por ende, al control del agua y sus territorios. En Latinoamérica, la gobernanza ambiental se ha transformado con base en la descentralización política y la restructuración liberal. Bajo este modelo se priman mecanismos de participación de los diversos actores en condiciones desiguales de poder, lo que en muchas ocasiones vulnera la justicia hídrica. Los estudios de la gobernanza del agua, desde el enfoque de la ecología política que este libro presenta, abren posiciones críticas para el debate interdisciplinario. Entendemos así, las diversas aportaciones de este libro como una construcción de puentes de diálogo entre la comunidad académica y las poblaciones locales. De igual manera, pretendemos crear nuevas ideas y perspectivas analíticas que sirvan de fuente de inspiración para todos aquellos que se empeñan en investigar y comprender la problemática del agua y sus injusticias