LangeMemo38

I hope for the book to reach three audiences. Firstly, I want to engage with the STS audience, particularly the social theoretically inclined, with a different approach to the analysis of science than those which are currently dominant in the field. Secondly, I would like to reach an activist audience. Activists around water issues, in my experience have very sophisticated approaches to understanding, and combating, policy makers, engineers, and corporations which deal with water issues; however, since it is a second, or perhaps third step removed from the process, the academic field of hydrology is not very high on their agenda, and as such they have not, so far as I can tell, developed as sophisticated an analysis of it. Certainly, I cannot fault them, since there are more pressing issues at the practical level; however, in the long term, I think the trajectory hydrology establishes in the coming years will have a great deal of influence over the global water system in the next 50 years, and so providing activist with an understanding of the field and its importance may allow some of them to engage with water issues upstream, in the academic and government sciences, which would have a beneficial effect on social water in the coming years. Finally, I’d like to engage hydrologists themselves, in a conscious attempt to influence the phenomenon I am studying. I would like to be part of a conversation which deals with the relationship between hydrology and global political economic forces, and the agendas that hydrologists will set for themselves in coming years.