A situated proposal for a grounded approach to socio-hydrology

Overview & Synopsis

Socio-hydrology, a range of attempts to better account for 'the social' in hydrological processes, has made significant progress during the Panta Rhei scientific decade of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences. Yet, where socio-hydrological studies continue prioritizing hydrological dynamics in explanations and solutions, critical social science studies continue to remain reluctant to engage in helping solve water problems, especially when this involves quantification. This Special Issue gathers contributions that share the ambition to enhance methodological symmetry between hydrological and social science forms of knowledge-making. Realizing this ambition hinges on (1) revisiting hydrology's epistemological preference for detachment, distance and replicability, replacing it with more modest forms of situated engagement that explicitly (re-)connect socio-hydrological knowledge-making to (always specific and political) places, waters, experiences, people, concerns and actions, and (2) inviting critical social science to leave the comfort of moral high grounds to become engaged in the design and development of practical solutions. This grounding of socio-hydrology takes the form of situated engagement and makes resulting knowledge both more accurate and more actionable, better linking proposed solutions to the transformations towards sustainability and justice that are so urgently needed.