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This publication belongs to the WATERLAT-GOBACIT Network Working Papers Series Volume 6, No 1, “Artisanal fishing and cultural heritage: territorial conflicts, resistances, and social transformation in Colombia, Mexico and Spain” (in Spanish). (http://waterlat.org/publications/working-papers-series/)

ATERLAT-GOBACIT Working Papers (ISSN 2056-4864 - online) Vol. 4 No 3. (www.waterlat.org). This issue of the Working Papers was developed by members of the WATERLAT-GOBACIT Network’s Thematic Area 6, Hydrosocial Basins, Territories, and Spaces (http://waterlat.org/thematic-areas/ta6/). Itfocuses on one of the main topics addressed by TA6, which is the ongoing academic and political debate about the concept of “basin”, which has become the object of severe criticism in several areas of public policy related to water management. From different standpoints, the papers discuss the commonalities and differences between the concepts of “hidrosocial” basins, territories, spaces, and landscapes, a topic particularly debated in human and political geography but also in the broader interdisciplinary field of political ecology. The last two papers also offer an empirical discussion about the continued relevance of the concept of “river basin” in the Iberian and French traditions of water management, and explore some of the associated policy implications, contradictions, and conceptual cleavages.

This paper explores potential contributions to case studies on water issues that can be made applying the “hydro-social” approach, to explain the complexity of human interactions connected with water uses in territories undergoing constant transformation. The key questions addressed are: why including the hydro-social approach in the analysis of water problems? And, what are the contributions that this approach can make to enhance our understanding of the processes taking place in territories where natural resources are being disputed? The text closes with a discussion of a range of possibilities for holistic research that considers the technical, social, economic, legal and political aspects in studies about territories and the water cycle from the “hydro-social” perspective.