WATERLAT-GOBACIT Working Papers (ISSN 2056-4864 - online) Vol. 4 No 2. (www.waterlat.org) This issue of the WATERLAT-GOBACIT Network Working Papers includes six contributions. The first article, by Mark Drakeford, presents a historical analysis of the changing arrangements for the provision of essential water and sanitation services in Wales. The second article, by Ross Beveridge, discusses the troubled process that characterized the privatization of Berlin’s Water Company (BWB) in 1999, in the aftermath of the reunification of Germany. In the third article, Emmanuel Akpabio, Eti-ido Udofia, and Kaoru Takara discuss some aspects of the interrelations between people and water in the context of sub-Saharan Africa. The fourth article, by Melina Tobias, Damiano Tagliavini, and Melisa Orta, addresses the current global wave of re-publicization of formerly privatized water and sanitation companies, looking at the experiences of Buenos Aires and Santa Fe in Argentina. In the fifth article, Barbara Casciarri and Mauro Van Aken discuss the significance and potentiality of "water" as an anthropological object of study. This article was originally published in French as an Introduction to an special issue on the anthropology of water in the Journal des Antropologues. The article by Casciarri and Van Aken was translated by Luisa Arango and Jorge Rowlands, who also provide and introduction to meta-studies of water-related research carried out by French and British anthropologists. The sixth and final article, by Ladislau Dowbor and Arlindo Esteves Rodrigues, focuses on the contradictions characterizing the conceptualization of water by different social actors, in particular the contradictions between market-driven notions of water as a commodity and civil-society understandings of water as a common good. The six articles composing this edition, from authors based in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, provide important contributions to current debates about the politics of essential water-related services. They also offer important insights about new avenues for research on water issues, aiming to enhance our knowledge of both empirical experiences and academic traditions that often remain isolated from each other whether because of geographical, national or cultural obstacles and distances.