Writing and notes on the concept of the Hydrosocial and how it describes the River Thames

A key text that has informed our thinking around Hydrosocial relations has been:

The Hydrosocial Cycle: Defining and Mobilising a relational-dialective approach to water - Jamie Linton and Jessica Budds'

Hydro-social - 1-s2.0-S0016718513002327-main.pdf

Defining the hydrosocial cycle: "We define the hydrosocial cycle as a socio-natural process by which water and society make and remake each other over space and time. This concept incorporates several key ideas drawn from the theoretical work described in the previous section; they are summarized here and elaborated below: First is the idea that the need to manage water has an important effect on the organization of society, which in turn, affects the disposition of water, which gives rise to new forms of social organization and so on, in a cyclical process. Second is the idea that by virtue of this relationship, water and society are related internally, which means that particular kinds of social relations produce different kinds of water, and vice versa. Third is the idea that despite this production of water, and despite the social construction of representations of water, the material properties of water play an active role in the hydrosocial process, sometimes structuring social relations and sometimes disrupting them (as in the case of a major flood)" pg. 175

"As Swyngedouw points out, the hydrosocial cycle involves ‘the transformations of, and in, the hydrological cycle at local, regional and global levels on the one hand and relations of social, political, economic, and cultural power on the other’ (Swyngedouw, 2009, p. 56)." pg 178

"The hydrosocial cycle, moreover, is a dynamic historical and geographical process, meaning that the assemblage that gives rise to a particular kind of water and a particular socio-political con- figuration is always changing." pg 176

(J. Linton, J. Budds, "The Hydrosocial Cycle", Geoforum 57 (2014), 175)

Questions and comments that arose from the Hydrosocial reading relating to the River Thames:

• How does the water of the Thames become a site of investigation for the social relations that act around it?
• Water as not a Homogenous entity; the Thames as not a homogenous water column. The Thames is made up of a multiplicity of material substrates and socio-material interactions that span geographies and temporalities:
• • 'Instead of treating water as homogenous, the hydrosocial cycle directs analysis towards the hybrid nature of different waters by attending to water’s different states, forms and qualities, which make it act and give it meaning in distinct ways.'
• How might the VIRTUAL WATERS OF THE THAMES be considered?