Legal geographies of water

Abstract

Legal geography seeks to understand the complex interactions between people, law, and space. It exists as an interdisciplinary endeavor, incorporating intellectual threads from critical legal studies, political geography, sociology, and related work. The purpose of this focus article is to introduce legal geography to water scholars as practical means to study law and space to human–water relationships (i.e., hydrosocial relations). We start by tracing a history of legal geography's development as a field and highlight important works in legal geography past and present. We then focus on ways legal geography has been utilized to explore four broad topics within the scope of human water: rights to water, water governance, water as imagined and represented, and value of water. We conclude that legal geography frameworks applied to water research may be useful for furthering the understanding of many of the issues important to WIRES Water readers.