Beyond the autonomous individual: hydrosocial relations and the constitution of the relational hydrosocial self in an Andean conflict.

This article addresses a specific under-theorized problem in social theory: how subjectivity is constituted through relations in which ecological and nonhuman entities are not contextual but constitutive. Against dominant models that define the self as autonomous, bounded, and human-centered, it argues that subject formation can emerge through hydrosocial relations linking humans, water systems, territory, and nonhuman entities. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in the Razuhuillca micro-watershed in the Peruvian Andes, the study combines in-depth interviews, walking ethnography, field observation, visual documentation, and complementary lexical analysis. The findings suggest that, in this case, water is understood not as a resource external to society but as a living condition of existence embedded in moral, spiritual, and territorial relations. Agency is distributed across humans and nonhumans, particularly Apu Razuhuillca, while ritual practices, collective care, and environmental narratives sustain a morally embedded hydrosocial field. The analysis identifies five mechanisms through which subjectivity is constituted: discursive enactment, distributed agency, moral embedding, experiential validation, and territorial practice. Together, these mechanisms provide a concrete account of how relational configurations are translated into forms of selfhood. On this basis, the article proposes the concept of the relational hydrosocial self as an analytical specification of how identity, agency, and moral responsibility emerge through hydrosocial relations. Rather than introducing a wholly new theory, the concept offers a more precise account of a limitation shared across relational sociology, political ontology, and more-than-human approaches by showing how ecological and nonhuman relations become constitutive of subject formation. In doing so, the article extends relational theories of the self beyond human-centered sociality, advances political ontology by linking ontological plurality to subject formation, and contributes to hydrosocial theory by suggesting that, in this case, water relations shape not only territory and governance, but also the constitution of the self.