A user-centred approach to irrigation performance: drip irrigation in the Khrichfa area, Morocco

Kooij, Saskia van der; Kuper, Marcel; Zwarteveen, Margreet; Fraiture, C.M.S. de

doi:10.1080/02508060.2017.1373319

Cited by 7 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Even though they might use slightly different words and have different theoretical ambitions, there are many scholars of irrigation systems and irrigated farming who share our interest in changes in infrastructure as a useful entry-point for understanding irrigation management and governance, and water-related societal orders. Studies such as those by Coward [9], Wade [10], Chambers [11,12] van der Zaag [13], Bolding [14], Mollinga [15,16], Mosse [17], van der Zaag and Bolding [18], Rap and van der Zaag [19], Benouniche et al [20], Méndez-Barrientos et al [21], Kuper et al [22] and Kooij et al [23] all meticulously document the details of designing, constructing, and/or operating irrigation systems, thereby laying bare the gap between (design or institutional) norms and actual practice. In more recent years, scholars who study drinking water systems have also started paying attention to the role of infrastructure, including its form and materiality, in reinforcing, maintaining or contesting social relations of power [24][25][26][27].…”

Section: Theoretical and Methodological Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attention to Sociotechnical Tinkering with Irrigation Infrastructure as a Way to Rethink Water Governance

Kemerink-Seyoum

Chitata

Guzmán

et al. 2019

Water

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Inspired by the proposal of political scientists and anthropologists to focus on “practice” as the smallest unit of analysis for understanding politics, as well as the renewed scholarly attention to materiality, this paper sets out to show that detailed ethnographic attention to processes and acts of sociotechnical tinkering provides a useful entry-point for understanding water governance. This is so methodologically, because infrastructural forms of tinkering are very visible, and therefore researchable, manifestations of agency and change in water governance. Attention to sociotechnical tinkering helps shift the basis for understanding water realities from official norms, designs and laws to everyday practices. This in turn allows questioning, rather than assuming, how expertise and agency are exercised and distributed in water governance, thereby also providing useful information for re-thinking water politics. In addition, by explicitly engaging with the contingency and capriciousness of actual water flows, a sociotechnical tinkering approach entails a much-needed re-appreciation of the materiality of water, infrastructure and other matter, a re-appreciation that extends to those who design, construct, operate and use water infrastructure.

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Section: Theoretical and Methodological Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attention to Sociotechnical Tinkering with Irrigation Infrastructure as a Way to Rethink Water Governance

Kemerink-Seyoum

Chitata

Guzmán

et al. 2019

Water

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“…These measured values differ drastically from the theoretical ones used in models. Likewise, the values of ''honor'' and ''prestige hierarchies,'' pervasive in North African cultures, clearly shape the practices of local farmers (van der Kooij et al, 2017). In the Kairouan Plain, field investigations revealed that numerous wells equipped with pumps that were not used were in reality nothing but markers of social prestige.…”

Section: 1002/2017wr021691mentioning

confidence: 99%

Inspiring a Broader Socio‐Hydrological Negotiation Approach With Interdisciplinary Field‐Based Experience

Massuel

Riaux

Molle

et al. 2018

Water Resources Research

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Socio‐hydrology advanced the field of hydrology by considering humans and their activities as part of the water cycle, rather than as external drivers. Models are used to infer reproducible trends in human interactions with water resources. However, defining and handling water problems in this way may restrict the scope of such modeling approaches. We propose an interdisciplinary socio‐hydrological approach to overcome this limit and complement modeling approaches. It starts from concrete field‐based situations, combines disciplinary as well as local knowledge on water‐society relationships, with the aim of broadening the hydrocentric analysis and modeling of water systems. The paper argues that an analysis of social dynamics linked to water is highly complementary to traditional hydrological tools but requires a negotiated and contextualized interdisciplinary approach to the representation and analysis of socio‐hydro systems. This reflection emerged from experience gained in the field where a water‐budget modeling framework failed to adequately incorporate the multiplicity of (nonhydrological) factors that determine the volumes of withdrawals for irrigation. The pathway subsequently explored was to move away from the hydrologic view of the phenomena and, in collaboration with social scientists, to produce a shared conceptualization of a coupled human‐water system through a negotiated approach. This approach changed the way hydrological research issues were addressed and limited the number of strong assumptions needed for simplification in modeling. The proposed socio‐hydrological approach led to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms behind local water‐related problems and to debates on the interactions between social and political decisions and the dynamics of these problems.

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“…From a somewhat different angle, Özerol & Bressers (2017) emphasize the mutual relationship between institutional and material changes triggered by the introduction of large-scale irrigation to a heterogeneous social structure. These studies highlight that technology and infrastructure exist through their replicability; albeit with permutations (Sese-Minguez, 2017; Van der Kooij et al, 2017). This reminds us that, "no technology can be said to exist unless the people who use it can use it over and over again" (Pfaffenberger, 1988, p. 241).…”

Section: Introducing 'The Material' Into Institutional Bricolagementioning

confidence: 99%

Socio-Material Bricolage: (Co)Shaping of Irrigation Institutions and Infrastructures

Mirhanoğlu

Özerol

Hoogesteger

et al. 2023

International Journal of the Commons

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Drip irrigation is often considered a technological solution to increase water use efficiency and crop productivity. However, all too often, its social and institutional entanglements are ignored. This paper treats drip irrigation as a socio-material assemblage and discusses the social and institutional changes triggered by the introduction of drip irrigation infrastructure in Ağlasun, a rural town located in the southwest of Turkey. Through an ethnographic study, we investigate how the switch from surface irrigation to drip irrigation entails an interaction of institutional re-arrangements, material infrastructures and strategizing actors to reshuffle the operation and maintenance of irrigation infrastructures, water distribution rules and water pricing. Expanding the concept of institutional bricolage to socio-material bricolage, we offer a nuanced understanding of how material infrastructures and institutions are mutually shaped by individual and collective agency.

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A user-centred approach to irrigation performance: drip irrigation in the Khrichfa area, Morocco

Cited by 7 publications

References 30 publications

Attention to Sociotechnical Tinkering with Irrigation Infrastructure as a Way to Rethink Water Governance

Attention to Sociotechnical Tinkering with Irrigation Infrastructure as a Way to Rethink Water Governance

Inspiring a Broader Socio‐Hydrological Negotiation Approach With Interdisciplinary Field‐Based Experience

Socio-Material Bricolage: (Co)Shaping of Irrigation Institutions and Infrastructures

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