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Hydrosolidarity: A socio-political reading of a moral concept

Maarten Loopmans
Division of Geography and Tourism, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium; maarten.loopmans@kuleuven.be

Jaime Hoogesteger
Water Resources Management Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands; and Associate researcher, German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), Bonn, Germany; jaime.hoogesteger@wur.nl

ABSTRACT: Solidarity as a moral appeal has made a regular appearance in water policies, but the concept has rarely been theorised in relation to water governance from a socio-political perspective. As a consequence, the real-life sociological and political underpinnings of hydrosolidarity have remained underexplored. This has limited its conceptual elaboration, analytical use and practical applicability in critical water governance theory and practice. Recent developments in sociopolitical research on solidarity have the potential to make up for this gap. This literature broadly defines solidarity as the willingness or moral obligation to share and redistribute material and immaterial resources. It emphasises solidarity as a situated praxis that is influenced by, and simultaneously constitutive of, social structures. Drawing from this literature, we identify four perspectives through which theories of hydrosolidarity can be enriched: first, an exploration of the sociopolitical foundations of hydrosolidarity as situated praxis; second, an expansion of the spatial imaginaries of hydrosolidarity; third, a broader understanding of the role of infrastructures for hydrosolidarity; and, finally, a more thorough theorising of hydrosolidarity beyond the human. These four perspectives, we argue, open up new lines of empirical inquiry on collective water governance.

KEYWORDS: Solidarity, water, governance, sociopolitical theory