Producing knowledge about Water. Theoretical and methodological controversies, flows, meanders, rigidities, and the pursuit of "full transdiciplinarity" (in English, Portuguese, and Spanish)

This issue of the WATERLAT-GOBACIT Network's Working Papers was organized by members of the Network's Thematic Area 1, TA1 – X-disciplinarity in Research and Action. TA1's membership includes academics, students, practitioners, representatives of social movements and civil society organizations, among others. This TA has a crosscutting function with interlinkages with the other Thematic Areas, of the Network, as it focuses on theoretical and methodological aspects concerning the challenges and opportunities facing our endeavours to produce knowledge about water from inter- and trandisciplinary perspectives. This particular issue offers significant contibutions that are relevant to all TA's but some articles also address specific empirical examples that are connected with topics covered by TA2 – Water and Megaprojects , TA3–, Urban Water Cycle and Essential Public Services, TA6–Hydrosocial Basins, Territories, and Spaces,TA7– Art, Communication, Culture, and Education, and TA8– Water-related Disasters. The issue features five articles, three in Spanish and the remaining two in English and Portuguese, respectively. Article 1, by Enrique Luengo González, addresses the challenges and obstacles facing scientific institutions, particularly universities, to generate the conditions required for developing, producing, and circulating knowledge that, beyond rhetorical arguments and formal statements, actually embraces inter-and transdisciplinary approaches. Among other issues, the author discusses the lack of institutional and financial resources required for the promotion and strentghtening of these approaches that seek to trascend monodisciplinary enclosures.The article explores the difficulties facing universities to organize and sustain over time research teams dedicated to the development of collective forms of knowledge informed by these approaches and oriented at solving complex problems, involving a wide range of actors beyond the academic sphere. Some of the obstacles identified are the lack of resources to support the processes of mediation and negotiation to generate adequate conditions for the production and dissemination of this type of knowledge, which is needed to provide collective solutions to complex problems, including proposals for practical action. The author argues that there is an urgent need to strengthen the capacities of universities to develop more situated, multidimensional, and complex approaches, and reorganize their teaching and research structures to improve their ability to contribute towards the development of more hopeful futures for human communities, particularly for the more vulnerable sectors. The final comments highlight some promising examples suggesting that inter-and transdisciplinary approaches have a fundamental role to play in the contributions that universities can make in providing support for solving the highly complex problems facing humakind in this historical stage. In Article 2, Norma Georgina Gutierrez Serrano discusses the design and implementation of transdisciplinary research methods in the context of networks and groups of researchers in Mexico. The author grounds the arguments in her experience working closely with these research networks and groups which included following up, and, occasionally participating in their activities. The article gives attention to the diversity of forms and dynamics of the transdisciplinarity in research activities practiced by these actors, and draws lessons about the interrelations that have allowed these networks and groups to succeed in establishing the ground for transdiciplinary research and also discussses how their practices also nurture the emergence of new interrelations, thus contributing to the reproduction and expansion of transdisciplinary approaches even in environments that not necessarily give priority or fully support these initiatives. The author emphasises that a key principle in the creation and development of transdisciplinary research activities is "thinking and acting with care", whereby interrelations between researchers and other actors are characterized by the presence of affective forms of human relations. In her view, transdisciplinary research is a "form of producing commons". Article 3, by Norma Valencio, addresses the contradictions and obstacles facing research initiatives that seek to "trespass" monodisciplinary enclosures often fiercely defended by institutional barriers, material interests and other hurdles. The author draws her reflections from experiences characterizing the production of scientific knowledge in the post-Dictatorship context of Brazil since the 1980s. She argues that during this period, scientific institutions increasingly faced the demands of social movements and other social actors affected by a wide array of socio-environmental crises and conflicts. The article examines some research initiatives that provide a model of commitment towards supporting grassroots struggles against socio-environmental injustice and inequality by developing inter-and transdisciplinary approaches and practices. Although the pioneering examples discussed are a source of encouragement, the author highlights the fact that some of the more difficult challenges and obstacles faced by these initiatives come from entrenched traditions of "disciplinary purism" and the institutional organization of the scientific system itself. Article 4, was co-authored by Gisela Ariana Rausch, Rosa Paola Aviña Escot, Lorena Bottaro, Ana Nuñez, Franco Salvadores, Marian Sola Alvarez, and Laura PriscilaTercero Cruz. The paper is a product of a Research Workshop focused on the propositions put forward by Christian Laval and Pierre Dardot on the concept of "common". The workshop included a Dialogue with Pierre Dardot that took place in one of the sessions. The authors discuss the implications and applicability of Laval and Dardot's understanding of "the common" for inter-and transdisciplinary research initiatives focused on social grievances and conflicts connected with water-related environmental injustices and inequalities in Latin America. The discussion presented draws from research carried out by the authors in Argentina, Guatemala, and Mexico. The article argues that Laval and Dardot's conceptualization of the "common" proposes a resignification of this concept and an invitation to wider disciplinary diversity in addressing the topic, which is required to develop more adequate conceptual frameworks to account for the growing complexity of socio-environmental processes. In Article 5, Luciano Villalba and Bianca Vienni-Baptista present an assesment of the implementation of a water-related transdisciplinary research and intervention project involving university researchers, public institutions and civil society actors in the City of Tandil, Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The authors' analysis is informed by the heuristic Transdisciplinary Framework developed under the leadership of Vienni-Baptista. The article presents details of this methodological framework for transdisciplinary research and shows how it provides a useful tool for the design, implementation, and evaluation of inter-and transdisciplinary projects.The paper places emphasis on the complexities of processes of knowledge production oriented by inter-and transdisciplinary approaches and casts light on the significance of learning from unsuscessful activities, which often provide key information for tuning and improving the design and implementation of research projects. In the particular case examined by the authors, factors like the wider political context, the level of commitment from key participants, failures of communication between different hierarchic levels of the project's organizational structure, and the obstacles faced to achieve a meaningful involvement of citizens and community representatives, particularly women, were identified as important reasons for the eventual weakening and stagnation of the project.

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