Hydrosocial geographies: Cycles, spaces and spheres of concern

Abstract

Over recent decades, hydrosocial scholarship focusing on the plural, often contested relations of waters and societies has advanced significantly. This article reviews hydrosocial scholarship in three steps that are contextualized by geography's long-standing efforts to use water to ‘think geography’. The article begins by revisiting critiques of the hydrological cycle as circulating free of anthropogenic forces and wholly on the ‘nature’ side of the society/nature dualism. We consider how this critique shapes engagement with other fields where human–water relations are crucial, such as socio-hydrology and those focused on climate change. The article then examines the extension of hydrosocial scholarship from critiques of the hydrological cycle to its use in explaining social spaces, such as territory, urban processes and citizenship. Finally, we consider how hydrosocial scholarship from Black, Indigenous and anti-colonial praxis challenges epistemologies and ontologies that, even in their critiques, recentre Eurocentric notions of water.