




































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 3 (2): 149–160, July 2020 

 
SPECIAL SECTION: New Epistemologies of Water in India  
 

Combining Political Ecology and “Mésologie” for a 
New Geography of Rivers? 
 

Flore Lafaye de Micheaux  and Christian Kull  
 
Abstract: How do we rethink the integrated management of river basins? This 
article is mainly a theoretical contribution that aims to reflect on ways of knowing 
rivers in the context of the Anthropocene. The authors suggest a new framework 
based on post-positivist geographies for a deeper understanding of environmental, 
political, and social conflicts related to rivers. They highlight the potential of 
combining political ecology and its hydrosocial cycle framework with the mésologie 
of Augustin Berque. This approach, inspired by non-modern ontologies, helps to 
account for the full texture of the relationship between society and rivers. It 
emphasizes human–environment relations and the concept of ―milieu‖. It 
particularly captures the role of lived experience in river–human relationships, by 
accounting for the emotions and interpretations that link people to rivers both 
collectively and individually. This is particularly appropriate in the Indian context 
where rivers are ritually revered. 

Keywords: River; Anthropocene; Political Ecology; Mésologie; Hydrosocial Cycle. 

 

1. INTRODUCTION 

While there are ongoing debates about whether the Anthropocene should 
be acknowledged as a new geological period, the acceleration of physical 
changes on the Earth‘s surface since the mid-twentieth century has created 
challenges for human societies. This acceleration has been both in 

                                                           
 Institute for Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne, Bâtiment Geopolis, 
UNIL-Mouline, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland; International Union for Conservation of 

Nature (Switzerland); French Institute of Pondicherry (India); floreldm@gmail.com.  

 Institute for Geography and Sustainability, University of Lausanne, Bâtiment Geopolis, 
UNIL-Mouline, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland; Christian.Kull@unil.ch. 

Copyright © Lafaye de Micheaux and Kull 2020. Released under Creative Commons 
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v3i2.231  

http://www.unil.ch/igd/
http://www.unil.ch/igd/
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v3i2.231


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [150] 

amplitude and in rhythm and is being experienced through land 
degradation, natural resource depletion, river valley reshaping, and climate 
change. In response, Chartier and Rodary (2016) call for geographers in 
France to take environmental change seriously and counter the ―eco-
scepticism‖ of some French geographers who believe that technology can 
solve global environmental issues. They propose reinterpreting the episteme 
of geography in the contemporary context and shifting to an 
―environmental geography‖. 

In this paper, we elaborate on a new theoretical framework for the 
environmental geography of rivers with the objective of rethinking existing 
practices of river management. We do so by questioning the ―grey 
epistemology‖ of rivers, such as the one promoted within the integrated 
water resources management (IWRM) approach.1 Deliberately departing 
from the river basin perspective, we wish to imagine a new geography of 
rivers to capture how the ideas and materialities of rivers operate in the 
contemporary social order. We discuss combining political ecology with 
mésologie (propounded by the French geo-philosopher Augustin Berque, it is 
a non-modern ontology inspired by phenomenological perspectives [Berque 
2014]) to cover the full texture of the relationships between society and 
rivers. 

 

2. RIVER STUDIES: WHAT KIND OF “OBJECT” IS A RIVER? 

In this section, we provide a brief history of the study of rivers to explore 
what kind of ―object‖ a river is. We do this by accounting for the diverse 
ways of knowing rivers and by revealing the hegemonic meanings of rivers. 
We borrow this approach from geographer Jamie Linton, who highlighted 
the hegemonic meanings of water while reconstituting ―the story of a 
modern abstraction‖ (Linton 2010). For our analysis, we consider three 
schematic chronological phases: the pre-modern, modern, and post-
modern.2  

The pre-modern phase encompasses antiquity and the entire medieval 
period up to the Renaissance. Examples drawn from ancient texts and 
archaeological evidences as presented by Metchnikoff (1889), the scientific 
secretary and collaborator of the French geographer Elisée Reclus, illustrate 

                                                           
1 IWRM is an international reference for water management. Its initial guiding principles 
(Dublin Statement, January 1992) gave way to a more technical and less political approach 
and was also introduced within the European Water Framework Directive (2000). 
2 Here ―post-modern‖ refers to all critical approaches, though sometimes contradictory, that 
emerged in the 1980s and that oppose the positivist approach. This proposal is in line with 
Mark Moberg's discussion about anthropological theories (Moberg 2013). 



[151] Flore Lafaye de Micheaux and Christian Kull 

the significance of rivers as providers of water and fertile sediment for 
agriculture and livestock rearing.3 The Hymn to the Nile, found on the Sellier 
Papyrus, explicitly states ―Rises he [the Nile], the earth is filled with joy, 
every belly rejoices, every being receives his food, every tooth grinds‖ 
(translation from Metchnikoff 1889, 211). During this phase, humans 
developed river knowledge primarily to help them manage their dependence 
on the river, as in the case of irrigation work. This river–society dynamic is 
also evident in Sanskrit literature (NIH 2018; Mukherjee and Choudry 
2018). The pre-modern agenda was to make the most of the river and to try 
to minimize its destruction—offerings to the deified river were one such 
modality—without questioning society's dependence on the river. The 
river–human relationship was characterized by adaptation or 
―accommodation‖ in Reclus‘ framing (Metchnikoff 1889). 

After the Renaissance, a conceptual distance between human actors and 
rivers emerged in the West. Scientists used mathematics and physics to 
explain the world and natural phenomena, independent of religious 
perspectives. In parallel, dualist views as seen in the philosophical works of 
René Descartes separated nature from society. New scientific tools emerged 
to control nature and rivers. The technologies developed during the Age of 
Exploration allowed for elaborate hydrography, which was also driven by 
military and strategic imperatives. There was a growing specialization of 
sciences, and disciplines such as hydraulics, hydrology, sedimentology, 
hydrogeology gradually emerged, alongside a scrutiny of the quality of water 
and its biology. The mathematical approach, as well as the complexities 
encountered by engineers in the applied sphere (such as while engineering 
large dams and river valley infrastructure), led to fragmenting problems and 
increasing specialization to reduce the number of factors considered and 
minimize the errors in mathematical modelling (Pardé 1959). The social 
dimensions of the problems tackled by ―river scientists‖ were dismissed, 
particularly the question of anthropogenic impacts on rivers. Humans were 
not included among the objects of the studies. 

Diverse reactions to the modernist model became more prominent in the 
second half of the twentieth century, during the post-modern phase. One of 
them was the increasing interest in environmental sciences among 
researchers in order to address the anthropogenic impacts on the 

                                                           
3 Leon Metchnikoff was a close friend and collaborator of Elisée Reclus and was part of a 
group of exiled Russian anarchist geographers in Switzerland which also included Pierre 
Kropotkin (Pelletier 2013); he was also a professor at the Academy of Neuchâtel. His 
opening address at the Société Neuchâteloise de Géographie, published in the Bulletin de la SNG 
in 1885, was the subject of comments recently published by Patrick Rérat and Etienne Piguet 
(Rerat and Piguet 2011). 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [152] 

environment. The scientific community then developed new fields of study 
such as eco-toxicology and bio-indicators for rivers. In parallel to this push 
for ―more science‖, a critique of modern science emerged in the 1980s 
within various post-modernist approaches; research started focusing on the 
relationship between objects and subjects, humans and non-humans, and 
the related arrangements and hybrids (Latour 1991). Braun (2008) proposed 
the term ―non-modern ontologies‖ to describe Anglo-Saxon works, which 
brought about an epistemological and ontological rupture, particularly in 
geography (Braun 2008). These theories assumed that the boundaries of 
―what is‖, especially between humans and non-humans, were no longer 
fixed, but in perpetual recombination, following the concept of networks 
from actor-network theory (Latour 1991).  

These non-modern ontologies permeate recent works in emotional ecology 
(Smith 2013), political ecology of emotions (Sultana 2015), and hydrosocial 
studies within the political ecology of water. The latter approach explores 
the features and dynamics of the ―hydrosocial cycle‖ that account for the 
dialectical and internal relations between water and society (Linton and Budds 
2014). In the same ontological vein, but according to a different 
conceptualization based on phenomenological perspectives,4 Augustin 
Berque (2014, 2016) has developed mésologie5 or the study of the milieu, 
i.e., the neither entirely objective nor entirely subjective relation between 
humans and their environment. In Berque‘s works, the milieu is 
simultaneously physical and ecological and human interpretation (2014). As 
in other non-modern ontologies such as actor-network theory, Berque‘s 
mésologie breaks the object–subject conceptual divide and renews our 
understanding of the human–environment relation as a mutually and 
internally shaping connection, parallel to the concept of a hydrosocial cycle 
in the political ecology of water framework. 

 

3. TOWARDS AN ENVIRONMENTAL GEOGRAPHY OF 
RIVERS: WHAT DOES POLITICAL ECOLOGY TEACH US? 

Political ecology of water provokes a reconceptualizing of water; it provides 
a radical critique of the capitalist mode of production and of ―natural‖ 
approaches to water that ignore water‘s social construction. It addresses the 
call for a cosmopolitical geography that explicitly explores the role of 

                                                           
4 Here, ―objects and subjects interpenetrate each other to form a geographical world that is 
only accessible through lived experience‖ (Pradeau 2013). 
5 This term should not be equated with the mesology developed by Charles Robin, a disciple of 
Auguste Comte, in the nineteenth century, which presents a positivist and determinist 
epistemology (Berque 2014). 



[153] Flore Lafaye de Micheaux and Christian Kull 

politics in creating a ―geography of justice‖ (Chartier and Rodary 2016, 41–
43). New conceptual tools have been proposed, such as the hydrosocial 
cycle, which differs from the hydrological cycle in that it accounts for the 
material as well as discursive co-production of water and society (Bakker 
2000; Swyngedouw et al. 2002; Linton and Budds 2014). It also invites 
researchers to reinterpret discourses and representations of water in order 
to reveal the political dimensions they contain and the social injustices that 
they may entail (Linton and Budds 2014). Several of these works on rivers, 
therefore, highlight the blind spots of policies and river management 
practices (Bakker 1999; Sneddon and Fox 2006; Norman and Bakker 2009; 
Graefe 2011; Tvedt 2011; Alatout 2012; Bouleau 2014; Bourblanc and 
Blanchon 2014). These works often relate to ―politics of scale‖ analyses 
(Swyngedouw and Heynen 2003; Rangan and Kull 2009), which also bring 
to the fore the social construction of scales that are often misinterpreted as 
a given. Some authors have also questioned the hegemonic use of the 
watershed concept, promoted by international organizations and the 
European Commission (Molle 2009; Graefe 2011). Others investigate 
rescaling measures in river management, shedding light on the biases 
involved (Sneddon and Fox 2006; Norman and Bakker 2009; Vogel 2012; 
Bourblanc and Blanchon 2014). These works successfully address a classic 
theme in political ecology, i.e., the social distribution of benefits and costs 
within the nested perimeters of river management policies (Molle 2005; 
Matthews 2012; Vogel 2012). 

However, political ecology does not deeply engage with the materiality of 
rivers, nor with the emotions and attachments towards rivers. This 
observation concurs with critiques from works that strongly engage with 
the material dimension such as ―bodily‖ or feminist geographies,6 and with 
critical physical geography that aims to develop dialogues between physical 
geography and critical approaches (Lave 2015). This observation also draws 
on approaches that seek to integrate the emotional dimension that 
permeates the world with academic works (Smith 2013; Sultana 2015; 
Chartier and Rodary 2016). In particular, the symbolic, ethical, religious, 
and emotional dimensions of rivers are not subject to specific analyses in 
political ecology‘s river narratives, even though the authors acknowledge 
the significance and roles of river imaginaries (Bakker 1999; Molle 2005; 
Sneddon and Fox 2006; Alatout 2012; Bouleau 2014).  

                                                           
6 We must note here at least two exceptions: Peterson (2000) proposes to model a river in its 
socio-political context as an ecosystem interacting with its own environment in his case 
study on the Columbia River in US. Bouleau (2014) details the biological indicators for the 
Rhone and Seine rivers in France and shows how these reflect the co-production of science 
and waterscapes.  



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [154] 

We argue that these bonds and attachments are likely to play a significant 
role in the ―strategic field of power relations‖ (Foucault et al. 2001, 241) 
through collective and/or individual actions. Dallman et al. (2013) presented 
the spiritual and emotional connections between the Winnemem Wintu 
tribe and its residual sacred spaces that were threatened by the extension of 
the Shasta Dam in California. The research demonstrated how these 
connections, perceived as inseparable from the identity and memory of the 
tribe, triggered the tribe‘s struggle—however symbolic—against the dam 
project. Drew (2017) investigated the extent to which women‘s religious 
devotion, beliefs, and practices involving the Ganga River catalysed and 
shaped political mobilizations against dam projects in the upper Ganges 
Basin. Boelens (2014) proposed the concept of a ―hydrocosmological cycle‖ 
to extend hydrosocial analyses to the examination of ―ancient and modern 

myths that attempt to normalize and subjugate actors to control by the 
dominant groups in water society‖ (245). However, these approaches do 
not particularly investigate the ontological dimensions that underpin these 
perspectives. Our proposition, as presented in the next section, will 
therefore turn to Berque‘s mésologie. 

 

4. THE CONTOURS OF THE “ENVIRONMENTAL 
GEOGRAPHY OF RIVERS” IN THE INDIAN CONTEXT 

Based on the richness of river–society relations that the existing literature 
highlights, we call for hydrosocial analyses to incorporate a focus on the 
materiality of rivers and the emotions and interpretations attached to them 
simultaneously.7 An environmental geography of rivers should scrutinize 
how the emotional and metaphoric, which could be the cultural, ethical, 
ideological, or spiritual dimensions of rivers, enrich the hydrosocial cycle. 
Emotions and interpretations emerge from sensitive relationships between 
individuals and rivers but also from collective representations, systems of 
preferences, and values, religions, and ideologies. Swyngedouw (2007) 
emphasized the importance of ideologies in his analysis of Franco's 
―hydrosocial dream‖ for Spain, as did Alatout (2012) in his ―geopolitical 
imaginaries‖ of the Jordan River. Religious beliefs and rituals are 
inseparable from several rivers in India, particularly the Ganges. The 
attachment to rivers operates simultaneously at the physical and spiritual 
levels. In the Indian context, bodily interactions with rivers are central to 
human–river relations. Many rituals involve bathing and ablutions with 
water from the Ganges or even taking a sip from it. Haberman recalls 

                                                           
7 For example: Sharma (2009), Eck (2012), and Singh (2013) shed light on the Indian context 
of revered rivers. 



[155] Flore Lafaye de Micheaux and Christian Kull 

(2000) that Vallabhacarya, a sixteenth-century Hindu saint, indicated that 
human relations with the material river condition one‘s capacity to relate 
with the two more elevated stages of the river—the spiritual river and the 
goddess river. Reciting mantras and uttering the name of Ganga also play an 
important role in the Hindu faith (Eck 2012). These are ways to invoke the 
goddess‘ presence in rituals at home. In her study on the Bhagirathi Valley, 
Drew (2017) showed how contemporary devotees in Uttarkashi city, 
especially women, recite chants dedicated to the river to actualize and 
strengthen the human–river relation. Therefore, the rituals strongly connect 
devotees to the river and contribute to shaping it as ―socionature‖, both 
materially and discursively.8 

At a collective level, the sacredness of rivers has also acted as an intrinsic 
trigger for the mobilization of activist movements since the 1980s; for 
example, the Ganga Ahvaan Forum promoted the maintenance of the 
pristine upper stretch of the Bhagirathi River (Uttarakhand) by avoiding the 
construction of hydroelectric dams. The present Indian government (2020) 
has also chosen to leverage the reverence for the river in its landmark 
Namami Gange Programme launched in 2014. However, this programme is 
also a counter example. The attention given to the cultural and ontological 
values of the river for political matters is socially counterproductive, as it 
may divert the authorities‘ efforts from precisely documenting the social 
impacts of the environmental condition of the river and questioning the 
representativeness and legitimacy of policy priorities (Lafaye de Micheaux 
2019).  

In response to the ―principle of sensitive geography‖, which calls for 
engaging with senses, practices, and emotions (Chartier and Rodary 2016), 
Berque‘s mésologie singularly complements political ecology with its 
concepts of milieu and trajection (the relationship, necessarily historical, of 
reciprocal and iterative transformation between the milieu and humans 
[Berque 2014]). Advancing the socionatural approach, mésologie captures 
the full extent of river meanings—i.e., the complex links between the 
material dimensions (sensory perceptions and practices also mediated by 
technologies) and the emotional and conceptual dimensions (value-charged 
representations) of rivers. It also refines the notion of temporalities: ―the 
reality of the milieu is simultaneously present, past and possible‖ (Berque 
1986, 151). We read this sentence as an invitation for researchers to expand 

                                                           
8 Geographer Erik Swyngedouw formed this neologism to reflect that society and nature are 
hybrids, internally connected and co-produced (1999). This proposition builds on a view of 
dialectics as internal relations (Harvey 1996) and on the actor network theory developed by 
Bruno Latour (1991). ―Socionature‖ encompasses material and discursive dimensions of 
nature in a historical-geographical production process (Swyngedouw 1999). 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [156] 

the spectrum of elements incorporated in their studies, such as mythological 
or religious narratives that defy rational space–time conventions. As a 
typical example of how these narratives may shape the governing of rivers, 
following New Zealand‘s Whanganui River, the Indian court also conferred 
legal and human entity to the River Ganges, justifying the action through 
religious (or traditional indigenous) perspectives that consider rivers as 
more than objects. 

 

5. CONCLUSION 

The combination of the hydrosocial framework with mésologie allows for a 
deepening of our understanding of stakeholders‘ perspectives and their 
positionality along with the full range and texture of the components that 
shape the hydrosocial cycle. Through this integrated framework, the social, 
ecological, political, and ontological issues raised around river management 
initiatives and their interlinkages can be better apprehended. Within the 
Indian context, where society has revered rivers since the days of antiquity, 
―colonial hydrology‖ (D‘Souza 2006) was the major departure from the 
traditional perspective that conferred intrinsic and relational values to the river 
(Pascual et al. 2017). In its contemporary legacy, evident in lofty national 
agendas like the interlinking of rivers, an ―environmental geography of 
rivers‖ can be a provocative approach to address questions from ―what 
changes?‖ to ―who changes?‖ if rivers are intervened upon beyond 
redemption. 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

A version of this paper was originally published in French in Géo-Regards, 
2016, 9: 97–117. An English translation of that version formed part of 
Flore Lafaye de Micheaux‘ doctoral thesis in 2019. The authors wish to 
thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors of Géo-Regards for their 
contributions to the reflections presented in this paper. They are also 
grateful to the editors of this special section of EES for their substantive 
support. 

 

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