Water worlds: Introduction to the special issue of Social Studies of Science

Abstract

The use and management of the world’s freshwater has become a critical focus of scholarly engagement. In the introduction to this special issue on water worlds, we highlight two contributions that science and technology studies offers to recent conceptualizations of water relations. The first emphasizes the multiple ontologies of water, resulting from its varied enactments in different sociotechnical assemblages. The second underscores water as a substance that does not merely mediate relations between existing social groups, but constitutes a necessary material for the organization of life in late modernity.