historical, philosophical, sociological, economic, geographical, and political) on the theme of river restoration were identified. This collection of literature forms only a sample of the work published in the field, particularly because it prioritizes international articles written in English at the expense of national publications and books written in other languages. Nevertheless, it allows an overview of the relevant publications and, by extension, of the dynamics of HSS research in the field of river restoration. To this end, we base our analysis on scientometric methods (Mingers and Leydesdorff 2015), coupled with lexical analysis methods (Lebart et al. 1998) and content analysis (Berelson 1952) of the publications.
1.2 Genealogy of research on societal issues in river restoration
According to Palmer and Bernhardt (2006, p. 3), “the final research frontier is restoration science that is informed by social science scholarship.” Addresses to the humanities and social sciences to invest more in the field of river restoration are recurrent (e.g. Ormerod 2004; Palmer and Bernhardt 2006; Wohl et al. 2015). However, it is sometimes difficult to know which disciplines are expected to be involved, and what issues should be worked on. Bennett et al. (2011, p. 4) present the “recognition and promotion of human, societal, or cultural requirements for stream restoration” as a shift in restoration science, emphasizing the importance of participation. Palmer and Bernhardt (2006, p. 4) refer to “cultural anthropology, environmental education, landscape architecture and city planners” as “social sciences.” Ormerod (2004, p. 548) refers to the “socio‐economic sciences” with a more explicit focus on economic approaches. All these authors address disciplinary contributions to the field of restoration according to the modern dichotomy between the “human sciences” and the “natural sciences” that is used to structure classical classifications in the scientific field. Other distinctions could have been made, for example the Frascati Manual separates the “social sciences” (e.g. sociology, economics, psychology, geography) from the “humanities and the arts” (e.g. philosophy, history) (OECD 2015, p. 59). These divisions are sometimes inherited from schools of thought or institutional traditions that vary from one country to another. They are sometimes overtaken by fields of research that are structured in an interdisciplinary or even transdisciplinary manner. Many authors publishing on the societal issues of river restoration belong to environmental studies institutes, not to humanities and social sciences institutes. Epistemological positions are also rarely asserted in publications, and it is often difficult to identify the disciplinary tradition to which the authors adhere.
The tendency to break away from disciplinary divisions must be interpreted in the light of the epistemological evolutions that have marked the human and social‐sciences‐based work on environmental issues since the 1970s (e.g. Turner et al. 1994; Lester 1995; Hannigan 2006; Castree et al. 2016). These developments, which have led in particular to the structuring of the field of environmental humanities (Blanc et al. 2017; Emmet and Nye 2017; Heise et al. 2017), have made the disciplinary limits more labile. According to Emmett and Nye (2017, p. 4), “The environmental humanities have become a global intellectual movement that reconceives the relationship between scientific and technical disciplines and the humanities, which are essential to understanding and resolving dilemmas that have been created by industrial society.”
The WoS bibliometric analysis shows that the journals in which such research is published are very rarely humanities and social sciences journals (Figure 1.1). For the most part, studies on societal aspects of restoration are published in journals with an environmental editorial line, explicitly interdisciplinary and applied (e.g. Environmental Management; Journal of Environmental Management, Ecology and Society) or water management (e.g. Water Resources Research, Water Alternatives, River Research and Applications) journals. Journals on environmental economics issues (e.g. Ecological Economics, Water Resources and Economics) are the ones with the strongest disciplinary roots on the social science side. Much work on economic or political issues is published in natural science journals (e.g. Hydrobiologia, Journal of Hydrology). Many societal issues have also been brought into the field of restoration by researchers in the natural sciences. For example, as early as the 1990s, it was the ecologist J. Cairns (1995) who proposed the notion of “ecosocietal restoration.” Certain research approaches, initially undertaken by researchers in ecology, hydrology, or hydromorphology, have largely contributed to placing societal issues at the center of thinking (e.g. Wohl et al. 2005; Palmer and Bernhardt 2006; Dufour and Piégay 2009). This is the case with the Long‐Term Ecological Research (LTER) network and then the Long‐Term Socio‐Ecological Research Network (Redman et al. 2004; Wells and Dougill 2019), which have been important steps in the emergence of more integrated approaches to restoration. This need to cross‐disciplinary divides is expressed in another way in projects such as critical physical geography, which pays “critical attention to relations of social power with deep knowledge of a particular field of biophysical science or technology in the service of social and environmental transformation” (Lave et al. 2014, p. 2).
Figure 1.1 Main international scientific journals in which research on societal issues of river restoration is published (1992–2019).
1.3 A scientific community organized regionally and occasionally around river restoration projects
Smith et al. (2014, p. 253) writes that “the integration of social science into restoration is relatively rare.” Indeed, while research in the field of river restoration emerged in the 1970s and grew significantly from the early 1990s, studies specifically focused on societal issues only emerged in the 1990s and remained limited in number until the mid‐2000s (Figure 1.2). Although societal approaches still represent a minority of the published work in the field of river restoration, it is a steadily growing minority. Over the decade 2010–2020, work on the social, economic, or political stakes of restoration represented 10% of all publications devoted to river restoration, whereas it represented only 5% in the 2000s and 2% in the 1990s. The results of this work seem to be increasingly mobilized by the interdisciplinary scientific community. According to WoS data, studies dedicated to societal issues are cited almost as much as studies addressing other topics in restoration (2.4 vs. 2.6 annual citations).
Figure 1.2 Chronology of international scientific publications on societal issues in river restoration.
The first works on societal issues listed in the WoS date from the 1990s, with these being published in Europe and the United States (e.g. Barendregt et al. 1992; Loomis 1996; Turner and Boyer 1997). Over the entire period, 72% of all publications dedicated to social, economic, and political issues were written by researchers from European and North American institutions, with 36% being written by US researchers alone. However, societal publications represent only 6% of all work in the field of river restoration published in the USA (Figure 1.3). Some countries, which publish less in the field of restoration, are proportionally more active on societal issues. This is the case for several European countries including Spain, Switzerland, Norway, and to a lesser extent Germany, which have been actively publishing since 2005. Studies published in Israel also give particular importance to work in economics (e.g. Axelrad and Feinerman 2009; Becker and Friedler 2013). Researchers from East Asian countries, whose first publications in the field of river restoration date back to the mid‐2000s