Strategic Network-building for Social Water Researchers

This one-day workshop invites participation from social researchers interested in building networks to extend the reach and effectiveness of qualitative, interpretive and post-positivist research methods in the areas of water governance and innovation. Inspired by the idea of water as an element vital to our collective socio-technical lives, the workshop conveners believe that adaptation and sustainability goals could be more readily achieved by broadening the focus out from individual/household solutions and purely technical innovations, and paying more attention to prospects for innovations in governance, and the diverse complexes of shared practices and values where socio-technical change might come about in daily domestic and workplace lives.

APRIL 6th 2017, Innside Hotel, Manchester

Held in conjunction with the inaugural Twenty65 conference, this workshop invites participation from social researchers interested in joining or building networks to extend the reach and effectiveness of qualitative, interpretive and post-positivist research methods in the areas of water governance and innovation. These methods typically strive to present the views of water consumers, workers, and those affected by water governance decisions in their own terms, and to identify contradictory factors, rather than use the positivist method of statistically aggregating people’s responses.

Water management and innovation are topics often approached from a central concern with the governance of water as a resource or a utility, and a focus on technical innovations. Social science is often brought in to identify individual behavioural solutions, or to help smooth the way to public acceptance of technologically- or economically-driven changes.

By contrast, this network-building workshop is for those who start with a notion of water as an element vital to our collective socio-technical lives. The workshop conveners believe that goals like climate change adaptation, water demand reduction or urban sustainability could be more readily achieved by broadening the focus out from individual/household solutions and purely technical innovations, and paying more attention to prospects for innovations in governance, and the diverse complexes of shared practices and values where sociotechnical change might come about in daily domestic and workplace lives.

Specific goals of the one-day workshop are:

To help qualitative social researchers of water get to know of each other and their projects, as well of existing networks
To form a network specifically for researchers interested in investigating practices and in making contributions to water governance that draw on the full range of methods and insights from humanities, social sciences and fields like human geography and social studies of science.
To ratify a joint statement appropriate for industry partners, government agencies and research councils that clearly states some of the values and benefits of social research for innovation in water governance. For example….. (the following is an aunt Sally for people to disagree with / develop) stressing how the mobilisation of expertise in society, culture and politics could help ensure that water related sustainability and adaptation problems and solutions recognise socio-technical complexity and do not lose sight of issues of social diversity, equity and justice.
To explore options for how the network can and should continue to interact beyond the meeting.

To register click here and select the workshop as an add on item.