Environment and Planning A 2011, volume 43, pages 2261 ^ 2266

doi:10.1068/a44498

Guest editorial

Water matters: agency, flows, and frictions

To say that water is crucial to life is axiomatic. It pervades daily life, manifests itself
in a variety of spaces and forms, and is used in a multitude of ways. It also pervades
geography's history as an academic discipline, whether through studies of hydrological
processes, examinations of resource distribution, or conceptualisations of nature ^ culture
relationships. Water's place in such theorising is not limited to recent explorations
in political ecology and hybridity but extends back to Semple's 1911 account of water's
``role in shaping the history of specific societies'' (Ekers and Loftus, 2008, page 699).
Geographers' engagement with water is diverse and disparate. Our aim in developing this
theme issue is to showcase a diversity of ontological and epistemological approaches to
understanding and examining water, bringing them together to highlight some of the
directions future research on human ^ water relations might take.
Within this broad aim we are particularly interested in taking ``cultural geo-
graphy's materialist recuperations'' (Whatmore, 2006, page 602) to the study of
water, developing Gandy's (2004, page 374) notion of ``water networks'' as ``agents
in the production of space'' and Swyngedouw's (2009, page 56) conceptualisation
of water circulation ``as a combined physical and social process''. Through such
work, water is increasingly treated in human geography as agential and hybridised;
it is not merely a resource to be managed, nor just a product to be valued and
consumed, but actively shapes new geographies. The papers collected here develop
these ideas by problematising the nature of water's materialities and taking a range
of approaches to conceptualising its agency.
We begin this editorial with a brief overview of existing work in geography and
build on this by drawing out key themes from the papers that constitute this theme
issue. In particular, we focus on water's multiple spaces, materialities, and agency. We
conclude by looking at some of the methodological implications of this theme issue,
particularly in developing less terrestrocentric approaches.
Engaging water's diverse geographies
Recent work in human geography and beyond has critiqued the tendency for water to
have ``been approached from a predominantly engineering, economic, or managerial''
(Swyngedouw, 2004, page 8) perspective. By far the most extensive and influential work
to date has been carried out by political ecologists inspired by neo-Marxist approaches,
such as Swyngedouw, Kaika, and Gandy. Swyngedouw's (1999) seminal work demon-
strated that water is not merely managed and is not external to the manifestation of
power relations: in ``Spain's modernization process ... the intertwined transformations
of nature and society are both medium and expression of shifting power positions that
become materialized in the production of new water flows and the construction of new
waterscapes'' (page 460). Similarly for Gandy (2004, page 369), ``water has always been
closely intertwined with the flow of capital''. Throughout this work, water is a resource
``in which social relations are embedded '' (Budds, 2009, page 420, original emphasis).
For the past few years, the dialectical approaches to water promoted by Swyngedouw
et al have been the dominant influence on its conceptualisation (Loftus, 2011); while
these authors are strongly influenced by the relational approaches of Latour and
Haraway, the focus tends to be on how water is socialised, rather than water's active,
2262 Guest editorial

agential, affective roles. As such, Loftus (2011) comments on the relative paucity of
studies driven by actor-network theory and other relational ontologies.
Recent studies, emerging from a variety of empirical and spatial foci, have engaged
with the implications of a more symmetrical approach to water, especially through
acknowledging water's agential properties. The first strand of work has studied the
ways in which humans come to know and understand water and how water's behaviour
does not always match these understandings. Developing directly from the political
ecology tradition, Linton (2008) and Budds (2009) have studied the ways in which
hydrological science conceptualises water ``as behaving in a consistent, uniform and
rational manner'' (Budds, 2009, page 420). As such, their work has highlighted the
messiness of water, in terms of both form and flow; it does not neatly conform to
abstract models but moves in often unexpected ways with unpredictable consequences.
The most familiar modelöthe hydrological cycleöis, therefore, ``a way of representing
water that was constructed in, rather than revealed through, scientific practice'' (Linton,
2008, page 631); it is especially a way of making ``water visible ... for the purpose of
accounting for, and controlling it'' (page 636).
A second strand of work focuses on the specific space of the sea. This follows
Steinberg's (2001) pioneering work, which moved geographers' engagement with the
sea beyond its status as a surface to be crossed and a ``space `outside' society'' (page 207).
This theme was taken forward by Lambert et al (2006, page 482), who argue that the
sea should be treated as ``something with a lively and energetic materiality of its own''.
Similarly, Peters (2010, page 1265) argues that ``the texture, the currents and the
substance of the water impact contemporary social and cultural uses of '' the sea.
Central to such work is the notion of multidimensionality: the sea has depth, which
has implications for how humans engage with the variety of lifeforms that inhabit it
(Bear and Eden, 2008; Peters, 2010).
These themes of agency and materiality have been taken forward in recent work
on rivers and urban drainage. Bull (2009), for example, shows how water is active
in narratives of masculinity. Eden and Bear (2011), meanwhile, study how anglers
attempt to catch fish that they often cannot see through the water's surface; water's
materiality demands that they develop understandings of how fish are affected by flow,
temperature profiles, different vegetation, and channel morphology. Communication
and interaction between species are thus mediated by water (see also Bull, 2011a). From
a different perspective, Jones and Macdonald's (2007) paper on Glasgow's proposed
new drainage system portrayed water as ``unruly''. For them, ``water can be concep-
tualised in terms of flows and movement through the city, with the management of
water being concerned with attempting to script that continued performance'' (page
535). Here, we see a politics played out not around water, but through water and often
driven by water. Water is an agent and its materiality matters.
The authors in this theme issue develop these ideas, focusing especially on the
material qualities of water and its transformative potential. As such, they look at how
water moves, at how its rhythms shape lives, and at tensions between making space
for water and allowing water to find its place. They also do not view water simply
as H2O, showing how it flows through multiple spaces, materially and discursively,
and how it flows in and out of different meanings.
Water's multiple spaces
Clearly water moves through and occupies multiple spaces: it flows through rivers,
lakes, seas, pipes, taps, and baths. But focusing on these flows and spaces concentrates
on ``blue water'' (Falkenmark, 2005, page 9) and ignores water's other formsöfor
instance, as moisture in soil, or held in plants and released through evapotranspiration.
Guest editorial 2263

The papers in this issue highlight water's multiple materialities and the heterogeneous
spatiotemporalities that follow. These issues are taken forward in the paper by Walker
et al (2011), which investigates the Hull floods that ostensibly took place in 2007.
They show that the floods were (are) hard to locate in space and time: long after the
boats retreated from residential streets and the official inquiry had published its
report, residents who originally thought themselves unaffected found that floodwater
does not merely flow but seeps, revealing itself through dampness. This is not the
dramatic form of flood that appears on television news but demonstrates the alter-
native routes that water finds when the infrastructure cannot cope. As such, they
develop Jones and Macdonald's (2007, page 537) observation of a tension between
water's physical characteristics and human attempts to discipline them: water is guilty
of ``misbehaviour''. The paper by Waley and Ðberg (2011) connects to Walker et al's
discussion of the spatial ^ temporal context of ``good'' and ``bad'' water. Waley and Ðberg
explore the various discourses of technological and environmental planning in Japan to
comment on the tensions between cultures of making space for water and of allowing
water to find its place. For them, this is not merely a story of different management
practices, through which water takes on social characteristics; it is a direct intertwining
and interplay of management knowledge-practices and the physical characteristics of
water.
Jones's (2011) paper is about the inherently spatial phenomenon of tides. These are
played out along coasts and in estuaries but are ``expressions of the interplay of many
profound forces, particularly the rotation and tilt of the earth and the relational move-
ments of the heavenly bodies'' (page 2287). But Jones is not merely interested in the
way tides play out across (and form) space. A key contribution of his paper is his
theorisation of ``how natural processes can not only create patterned ground but
rhythmic timeörhythmpattern'' (page 2301). Thus tidal rhythms can be found in
activities such as coastal agriculture and bird watching, as well as in the lives of plants
and animals. A question arising implicitly in his paper concerns the extent to which
tidal forces retain a presence in human and nonhuman lives and actions even after, for
instance, the water has been held back by barrages. In other words, tidal patterns and
processes might exert forces beyond the water itself.
Bull (2011b) addresses similar issues, showing how, for anglers, the ``waterscape''
is not just about being by the river but ``weaves its way through the multiple spaces
of encounter'' (page 2270)öpartly through the practice of fishing but also through
conversations with other anglers in pubs and reading angling literature. Through these
heterogeneous activities, the flows of water take new directions, rivers combining and
colliding in different spatiotemporal contexts, the material and immaterial becoming
hard to distinguish. Further, he highlights the ways in which fish move through differ-
ent water spaces, some hatching in spawning redds in the river, others being produced
in hatcheries, and all swimming through the river. As such, he contends that ``[t]he
flesh of the fish embodies the entire aquatic ecosystem and also the diffuse and mobile
environmental issues of an entire catchment'' (page 2275). Through this, he emphasises
the mobile qualities of water and the necessity to develop a more-than human ``lively
understanding of materiality (and landscape)'' (page 2281).
Materiality, flows, and agency
If water moves through multiple spaces, it also takes multiple forms: as Bull
(2011b) notes, ``water has many more possibilities than H2O'' (page 2278). To talk
of the materiality of water is problematic. As the papers here demonstrate, the
materiality of water exceeds its physical properties: ``it asks questions, it has histories,
to which we respond'' (Bull, 2011b, page 2278, following Anderson and Wylie, 2009).
2264 Guest editorial

Rather than reducing water to H2O, the authors in this issue read water's agency in
a number of ways. Walker et al view agency as emergent, drawing on the notion
of assemblage, where `being flooded' is not just a physical process but something
that is felt, something that is classified, and something that is managed. In one sense,
this reading decentres the role of water in situations of flood. In another sense, their
focus on extended and unexpected temporalities of flood encourages a focus on the
different ways water moves.
For Jones (2011), water's agency takes a number of forms. Centrally, the movement
of water caused by tides moves material, dramatically shaping landforms anew. Here,
tides are ``a key way in which water is animated to agency'' (page 2287). As noted,
expressed through the movement of water, tides and their rhythms shape lives: they do
not just shift ground but create rhythmic time. Agency might again be viewed here as
residing in an assemblage, where extraterrestrial forces are ``folded into a range of
ecosocial systems'' (Jones, 2011, page 2287). As such, the agency of tides preexists
and extends beyond humans: Jones (page 2289) cites Grosz (2005, page 6), who argues
that ``Nature is [not] the polarized opposite of culture but [its] underlying condition.''
But while the tidal pressings shape littoral zones, ecologies, and cultures, Jones shows
how these tidal processes can be ``smoothed''. In a similar way to Walker et al's (2011)
conception of flood as more-than-water, smoothing of tidal processes for Jones is not
merely about the physical containment of water, it is also about the circumvention of
tidal rhythms by, for instance, building bridges rather than relying on boats. As such,
Jones suggests that ``temporal conflict between social times ... and natural times, and
a disregard of other temporalities'' is ``more likely than eradication'' (page 2297) of
tidal temporalities. The theme of `smoothing' implicitly permeates Waley and Ðberg's
(2011) paper, which sheds light on institutional and everyday waterscape cultures
in Japan. There, management discourses are not simply around and imposed on water
but are with water. While some engineers favour soft, ``green'' approaches, others favour
hard construction approaches to water management, but water itself intervenes, its
actions as more than H2O, affecting attitudes to engineering solutions.
Water's ability to connect, smooth, and intervene is also emphasised by Bull
(2011b), as he focuses on the ways fish embody and connect ``the entire aquatic
ecosystem'' (page 2275). However, this smoothing is tempered by frictions and stria-
tions as he highlights how the fish encountered by the anglers in his paper do not just
flow through the river, from birth to death. Some are born in the river; others stem
from hatcheries and are stocked by anglers and a variety of environmental managers.
Through this, the fish provide a connection between disparate waterscapes; they
experience life through spatial disjuncture. Through this, they allow waterscapes to
connect, physically and politically, and cause tensions.
Conclusions
The authors in this issue did not set out to develop specifically watery methodologies,
but their research has important methodological implications. What emerges from
acknowledging water's multiple materialities is a variety of conceptual approaches
and new methodologies open to immanent more-than-human forms and flows. Jones
(2011, page 2287) hints at the need for further work on this through his citation of
Dalby (2007, page 113):
``social scientists, and certainly many geographers, are guilty of a form of `terrestro-
centrism', a focus on the land rather than an understanding of ourselves as part of
a biosphere dominated by oceans and atmosphere.''
As Waley and Ðberg (2011) suggest, when we make space for water we create
many opportunities which demand new approaches and combinations. To address
Guest editorial 2265

this diversity, Walker et al (2011) set out to ``follow the water, moving from the
processes that produced the flood as a city event, through to street-level flows and
accumulations, and into the material and social spaces of the home'' (page 2305).
Following water is one important route to moving away from anthropocentric
approaches to studying water, and also diverts attention from water channels (rivers,
pipes, sea basins, and so forth), towards less ``blue'' water (Falkenmark, 2005, page 9).
A second approach is that offered by Bull (2011b), who does not so much follow the
water as look at movements in and around water. Following Ingold (2008), who
identifies the analytical obsession to focus on the movement of objects across surfaces
instead of the movement of bodies through media, Bull (2011b) looks not only to follow
water but to recognise the frictions of moving through water. Through this, he shows
that water's materialities align bodies in particular ways, questioning and shaping those
bodies.
This theme issue therefore constitutes a resistance to terrestrocentrism: it is a
response to the materiality of water and a call to follow the water and to question the
politics of moving through and with water.
Christopher Bear
Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Aberystwyth University
Jacob Bull
Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University
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