ABSTRACT Understanding water issues as problemsheds addresses the narrowly water-centred framing of watershed and basin-focused water research and policy. In a critical realist approach problemshed also serves to identify the context-specificity of water knowledge, by navigating between the extremes of positivist generalization and interpretivist local specificity and bridging the divide between academic and applied research by identifying the structural similarity in their problem framing. Problemshed is operationalized by situating it in critical realism’s structures-mechanisms-events ontology, and by drawing on realist evaluation’s context-mechanism-outcome configurations. I use large-scale canal irrigation in India to illustrate how this is done.

中文翻译：

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知识、背景和问题：跨学科水研究的批判现实主义方法

摘要 将水问题理解为问题流域解决了以流域和流域为重点的水研究和政策的狭隘以水为中心的框架。在批判现实主义的方法中，问题还可以通过在实证主义概括和解释主义地方特殊性的极端之间导航，并通过确定问题框架中的结构相似性来弥合学术和应用研究之间的鸿沟，从而确定水知识的上下文特殊性。Problemshed 通过将其置于批判现实主义的结构 - 机制 - 事件本体论中，并利用现实主义评估的上下文 - 机制 - 结果配置进行操作。我用印度的大规模运河灌溉来说明这是如何做到的。