Call for Papers 2026-2 for the special issue “Dis-encounters and Re-agencings of Water Bodies in Cities.”
Espacialidades Journal, July–December 2026-2
Call for Papers Deadline:
August 30, 2026
Submit proposals to:
revista.espacialidades@cua.uam.mx
This special issue invites critical and interdisciplinary contributions that explore the socio-spatial dynamics of water bodies—rivers, lakes, canals, and aquifers—in urban and rural contexts, with an emphasis on the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (ZMCDMX) and other global case studies. The aim is to advance the debate on the political ecology of water and cartography, emphasizing water bodies as actors embedded in complex networks of social life and power. Drawing on critical spatial theory, urban ecology, and critiques of dualist ontologies, contributions should deepen our understanding of how water infrastructure and waterways are experienced, contested, and managed in contemporary landscapes. Drawing on debates in political ecology, decolonial studies, and critical cartography, we seek articles that examine how water is represented, managed, and contested, highlighting its role in power relations, collective memory, and environmental justice. Water is not merely a resource, but a site of conflict where historical erasures, neoliberal urbanization, and community resistance converge. This element forms part of complex networks of action: from the piped-up rivers of Mexico City to the reclaimed lakes of Xochimilco; bodies of water embody disputes over visibility, access, and sovereignty. This issue seeks to:
1. Deconstruct hegemonic cartographies that legitimize unequal hydro-social orders (e.g., government maps that present floods as technical rather than political problems).
2. To “empower” bodies of water by studying the institutionalization processes they provoke and integrating them into networks of action.
3. To highlight insurgent practices, such as counter-mapping, participatory cartography, and affective methodologies that reveal marginalized water histories and alternative imaginaries.
4. Promote relational and decolonial ontologies that challenge nature/culture dichotomies, centering Indigenous, feminist, and queer perspectives on water as a living, embodied, and plural entity.
Suggested thematic areas
We welcome empirical, theoretical, and methodological contributions, including, but not limited to:
– Critical cartography: How do maps produce or destabilize socio-ecological realities? Studies on counter-mapping, critiques of GIS, or community projects (e.g., GeoComunes).
– Hydro-social territories: Conflicts over megaprojects (e.g., the Cutzamala system), water privatization, or infrastructural violence (e.g., displacements caused by drainage tunnels).
– Decolonial and feminist approaches: Embodied methodologies (e.g., walking ethnographies, sensory mapping), ancestral knowledge, or legal personhood for rivers.
– Urban political ecology: Water in capitalist urbanization, speculative land use, or “green” gentrification (e.g., La Quebradora Park).
– Affective and queer ecologies: Emotional geographies of water, non-human agency, or artistic interventions (e.g., soundscapes of polluted rivers).
This issue seeks to build bridges between academia, activism, and art, fostering dialogues that reimagine water as a space for radical democracy and pluriversal futures. Researchers, activists, and practitioners working at the intersections of space, power, and justice are invited to contribute.