CALL FOR PAPERS

No. 45 / "A debate on the global geopolitics of fresh water"

To be published in October 2020

The journal Relaciones Internacionales has been published without interruption for 15 years; this electronic publication of the Autónoma University of Madrid (Spain), published every four months, has become a reference in the Spanish language literature on the theoretical and epistemological reflection of international relations, thanks to its efforts in driving and promoting critical and interdisciplinary approaches around a multitude of phenomena, actors and topics. The original orientation of its publications, added to the high level required in terms of the content and form of articles, have contributed to the growing impact of the journal and to the recognition it has gained in important international indexes; in addition, in 2019 the journal has been accredited with the FECYT (Spanish Foundation of Science and Technology) seal of quality, which recognizes Relaciones Internacionales as one of the best journals in the Spanish academic panorama.

The Call for Papers of volume 45 of the journal has positioned fresh water at the centre of the debate, and particularly, those reserves from which it is used, or the human being could need in the medium term to carry out diverse productive and every-day activities in their domestic, community or global life. The certainty that fresh water is a cross-curricular element to all aspects of human life means that a global anxiety has been building in the last decades, and because of the transcendental geopolitical, economic, sociocultural or normative aspects of the situation, with growing international concern over access to water, its uses and the right to its exploitation.

In spite of the abundance of water that exists on the Earth, scarcely 0.3% is apt for human consumption, and from this global provision of fresh water the largest part is found in the poles and in the atmosphere. Thus, it is less than a fifth of these reserves that corresponds with the underground aquifers, the lakes and rivers of the planet; it is in these geographic spaces where both human beings and animals extract the necessary quantities of water to live and produce energy or food. The production systems of capitalist development and the growing global demographic have placed this natural element in a compromising situation, and we affirm that currently water is situated at the epicentre of some of the largest debates in international relations of the 21st Century, specifically those that take place around discussions about the condition and category of natural resources and their uses.

It is also evident that the contemporary global economic processes have exacerbated the problems of water; all production processes base some of their stages on the use of water, which added to the massive extraction or accumulation systems of this resource are generating local and global tensions in many ways —political, social, economic, ideological, cultural, discursive or identity—, generated as much by the excess extractions of water as by the consequences of it in the ecosystems where it is found this element. In this way, the problems of environmental pollution —of water or the surroundings of the productive and extraction bases—, the inadequate or discriminatory political management of the resource —phenomenon aggravated in the regions with a weak consolidation of democratic procedures—, or the unequal distribution of the economic benefits of it —which harden the global disparity between enriched international actors and those subalterns of the capitalist system—, represent the possibility of latent conflicts, and pose a series of dilemmas and contradictions that must be addressed urgently.

Starting from the basic consideration of water as an element available in nature, it is however evident that such an element has two different characters coexisting in the contemporary capitalist society: one economic and the other legal. These two characters award it a double nature —as a resource and as right— and generate two very different social conceptions: on the one hand, that which considers water to be a resource exploitable by the human being and that which argues over the terms, conditions and limits of such exploitation; on the other hand, the perspectives are situated that understand water in the framework of fundamental rights of the human being and tackle the problematic from the legal perspective. In such articulations, the universal characteristics of the element are based on the framework of the international legal norms to which states have subjected themselves.

The objective of this volume of the journal Relaciones Internacionales is to politically problematize the element and confront in this regard a necessary interdisciplinary debate about the global geopolitics of water, with a theoretical discussion on the perspectives, tensions and conflicts stirred up by the convergence of interests, values, world views and considerations of fresh water in the international system. It is especially hoped that the authors raise alternative epistemologies for the most widespread conceptions of water in the prevailing liberal-capitalist system, defining or redefining categories, concepts, tensions, notions or uncertainties around the problem.

Those contributions that offer critical theoretical support to the discussion on the politics of fresh water in global dynamics shall be prioritized, along with texts that tackle and deepen categories and concepts typical of this debate. Next, a set of examples is provided of the type of work that it is hoped can feed the publication:

• Articles about the ontological discussion on water.
• Hydropolitics as an emerging discipline in the framework of geopolitics.
• Theoretical approaches to the politicization of the debate around water.
• Development of the field of the political ecology of water.
• The problematization of the duality society-nature surrounding fresh water.
• Reflections on the so-called postnatural epistemological turn focussed on water.
• Foundations that justify public or private management of fresh water.
• The political aspects of international procedures or administration.
• Contributions on the concept of hydrosocial cycle.
• Works on asymmetric power relations around water.
• The geostrategic value of drinking water and debates around hydrohegemony.
• The particular framework of transnational reserves.
• The crossborder water resources and their relations with defence policies.
• The analysis of actors and interests in the global exploitation of this resource.
• The concept ‘waterscape’ and its use in theoretical reflection.
• The political narrative of a water cycle that incorporates regional environmental controversies of the area in the refill of fresh water reserves.
• Resistance and global movements around drinking water.
• Access, management and right to water of native peoples or indigenous communities.
• Transnational violence around drinking water.
• Ecological perspectives of access and management of fresh water.
• Theoretical approaches of the transnational environmental degradation of fresh water.
• Critical perspectives on the business of bottled water.
• The relationships between multinationals and democracy with the control of water.
• Theoretical contributions from the analysis of soft-power about national policies of decentralization in the decision-making process regarding water.
• Access to drinking water for personal use from the perspective of gender.
• North-South relations and problematizations of underdevelopment on fresh water.
• Quality of public health services, hygiene and access to drinking water.
• Water security, concepts and approaches in tension.
• The concept of ‘virtual water’ and its usefulness in the context of globalization.

The volume 45 of Relaciones Internacionales will be published in October of 2020; the Editorial Team and the Coordination of the volume have established the following dates:

 

DUE DATE

ABSTRACT:
It should be a text of between 500 and 1000 words that displays concisely and with clarity the fundamental aspects to be developed in the later article. The date of delivery ends on Sunday 12th of January of 2020 (day included). The proposal must be sent in a PDF document indicating the authors, institution affiliation, provisional title of the article and abstract of the text, with copy sent to the following three email addresses:

• eduardo.tamayo@uam.es
• aceacostarrii@gmail.com
• anisabel.carrasco@gmail.com

Communication of ACCEPTANCE:
The coordinators of the journal will analyse the abstracts sent to check if the proposals of the authors are adequate for the defined lines of investigation in the present Call for Papers, and they will communicate by email the acceptance or rejection of the proposals on Monday 13th of January of 2020.

ARTICLES:
The full text of the article shall be sent by the authors to the coordinators before Sunday 1st of March of 2020. The article must conform wholly and meticulously to the Style Manual of the Relaciones Internacionales journal.

The delivery of the article should be made on the web site of the journal, through its administration platform OJS (Open Journal System), so it will be essential that the authors —all of them, in the event that there is more than one— are registered on the web by completing the requested data on the platform registration page with the highest level of detail and updating:
https://revistas.uam.es/relacionesinternacionales

EVALUATION process:
Once the article is sent correctly through the web-site platform, the double blind evaluation process begins, which will take between three and six months, depending on the case, which could include the return of the text to the authors for revision or correction of the changes and suggestions made by the anonymous reviewers. During the evaluation process, the reviewers will be tasked with certifying the quality of the work of the authors, as well as the adequacy of the definitive texts for the topic proposed in the Call for Papers.

• IMPORTANT NOTICE: suggestions of possible reviewers by the authors are allowed to evaluate their texts. With the abstract of your proposal, you can send us by email the names of academics with extensive knowledge about the aspects researched in your work; if the Coordination team considers it appropriate, they will contact these reviewers.

DEFINITIVE ACCEPTANCE:
Throughout the evaluation process (between March and August of 2020), those authors whose text receives the complete approval of the assigned reviewers will be notified of the definitive acceptance of their article, the moment in which they will have absolute certainty that it will be published in the journal; the article will be published in the volume of October 2020 as is scheduled —and not in a prior volumen— is subject to the complete conformation of the text to the instructions indicated in the Style Manual of the journal.

EDITING process:
During the month of September of 2020 the journal will proceed to the definitive editing of the text to be published in October. The obligatory nature of fulfilling thoroughly the indications in the Style Manual of the journal should be stressed again, with a view to avoiding delays that could postpone the publication of the text to a later volume.

PUBLICATION OF THE VOLUME:
Throughout the month of October of 2020 the volumen will be published in digital format, on line, open, and free, volumen 45 of the journal Relaciones Internacionales, which will carry the title A debate on the global geopolitics of fresh water (in spanish: Un debate sobre la geopolítica global del agua dulce), in which all of the articles that have satisfactorily fulfilled the requirements of the phases indicated above will be published.

LANGUAGES:

AProposals in Spanish, English, Portuguese and French will be accepted, but will be translated into Spanish for final publication. Whenever possible the articles will be translated by the authors; the journal doesn’t guarantee that all texts can be translated by editorial team.

COORDINATION OF THE VOLUME
Eduardo TAMAYO BELDA – eduardo.tamayo@uam.es
Aida Cecilia ACOSTA – aceacostarrii@gmail.com
Ana Isabel CARRASCO – anisabel.carrasco@gmail.com