The image as a means of understanding the difficulties in managing water for human consumption in the indigenous territories of Costa Rica: from the objectivity of satellite images to the subjectivity of social designs

Abstract

The six Costa Rican indigenous territories under study present different ways of managing water resources for human consumption, which vary according to their socio-environmental and socio-economic conditions. As a result of these variations, various socio-environmental conflicts are also observed, although in general terms they can be grouped into three categories: deforestation, contamination and appropriation of water sources. In this work, some of the results obtained within the framework of the research project B9314 entitled "Social management of water in indigenous territories from Visual Sociology are presented. Selected cases in the provinces of Puntarenas and Limón". The methodology used is mainly based on the use and processing of images (aerial and terrestrial), social drawings, workshop transcripts and other relevant sources, to demonstrate the usefulness of images as a way of hermeneutic understanding of reality and from an interdisciplinary approach of visual sociology.