Canal Irrigation and Local Social Organization [and Comments and Reply]

Hunt, Robert; Hunt, E. K.; Ahmed, Ghazala; Bennett, John W.; Cleek, Richard K.; Coy, Peter; Glick, Thomas F.; Lewis, Russell E.; MacLachlan, Bruce B.; Mitchell, William P.; Partridge, William L.; Price, Barbara J.; Roder, Wolf; Steensberg, Axel; Wade, Robert; Wellmann, Imre

doi:10.1086/201755

Cited by 100 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…The fundamental tasks for irrigation system management are the organization of water allocation, physical maintenance activities and conflict management 4,7 . Some general features of how farmers organize these tasks for irrigation management in the region are discerned † .…”

Section: (2) General Management Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Traditional Farmer-Managed Irrigation System in Central Nigeria

Abe

Wakatsuki

et al. 2010

JARQ

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This paper examines the characteristics of a traditional farmer-managed irrigation system in Nigeria, through the presentation of a detailed case study. It documents the development of a traditional irrigation system in the inland valley of the Bida region in central Nigeria and the features of its operation and management. The physical structure and the composition of system users were surveyed in detail. In addition, the characteristics of community management of several irrigation systems in the region were investigated. Farmers were able to mobilize necessary local resources for irrigation development and maintenance although they did this without any external support. The irrigation management institution in the area was highly linked to the local land tenure system. The involvement of landlords in the irrigation community greatly affected the performance of irrigation management. There was no clear definition of water rights. In times of water shortage, water was rotated and shared but water scrambling had become a severe problem in recent years with the higher demand for off-season crops. Irrigation communities were organized informally without tiers of nested organizations. Unfairness in water distribution and contribution to system maintenance existed between top-enders and tail-enders of irrigation canals. Nevertheless, the multi-layered and fragmented land ownership of the region made coordination among different irrigation communities difficult and the unfairness problem could not be solved without institutional changes.

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Section: (2) General Management Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Traditional Farmer-Managed Irrigation System in Central Nigeria

Abe

Wakatsuki

et al. 2010

JARQ

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“…Otherwise the passage would have to be a total fabrication, which seems highly unlikely given Guaman Poma's ( [1613]1978:356, 246, 848, 1040, 1237) repeated emphasis on justice and fairness. In the political field of irrigation and water rights, the concept of fairness, I would insist, necessarily encompasses both uniformity and proportionality, principles whose great significance has only slowly been recognized during decades of research by students of irrigation throughout the world (Coward 1979;Glick 1970;Hunt and Hunt 1976;Ostrom 1990). The ideas are featured in both accounts, which cannot therefore be a fable or a mere projection into the past.…”

Section: Implications For Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Moral Economy of Water: Equity and Antiquity in the Andean Commons

Trawick

2001

American Anthropologist

118

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This article focuses on irrigation and water use in a community in the Peruvian Andes, one of numerous villages in the region where these activities are carried out in an unusual way. The practices and principles that make up this tradition, defining the rights and duties of community members in making use of the resource most vital for life, are identified and evaluated based on comparative ethnographic research. It is argued that they provide a highly effective way of managing a scarce and fluctuating resource that is held in common, an older Andean tradition that may have been adopted by the Incas and endorsed as an official policy-all of which might help to account for its wide distribution in the region today. In this particular case, the principles help to create an extraordinary kind of community, a transparent and equitable one in which a basic material symmetry or proportionality is expressed at many levels. This symmetry is closely related to other basic commonalities among community members, but of particular interest are its effects on social solidarity and cooperation and its association with a strong sense of ethnic identity. The implications of this tradition for solving contemporary problems in water management are also briefly discussed, [sociocultural anthropology, irrigation, Andes, common-property] A nthropologists have long sought to understand the ways in which irrigation has shaped the development of societies in relatively arid parts of the world, beginning with Steward (1949Steward ( ,1955 and Wittfogel (1955Wittfogel ( , 1957. This interest reflects a broader fascination with the nature/ culture relationship-one of the great enduring themes, now understood to require a kind of ecological research that is historical and quite broad in scope (Biersack 1999;Kottak 1999), but still focused in some basic way on material relations. Yet the ethnographic study of irrigation began rather late, and, until recently, it did not appear to have taken us very far. The main thing learned during the early years was that hydraulic systems come in many shapes and sizes in various kinds of environments, so that, unless we narrow the field of inquiry and make some initial assumptions, few interesting generalizations can be made about them. The comparative study of these systems, which began in the 1960s but did not start to see significant advances until the 1980s (Hunt 1988;Kelly 1983), only reinforced this point of view.By limiting discussion in the simplest way, geographically, it becomes possible to make a few general statements about one major region of study, the Andes of Peru: (1) a distinctive kind of watering system was constructed there in prehistoric times-small-scale, vertically oriented canal systems, typically fed by alpine springs; (2) this was the only kind that could be built in most areas, due to limitations imposed by the topography and climate (Trawick 1994a:35-36); and (3) these small systems have, throughout history, formed the basis of a certain type of society, a village society...

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“…To assume that irrigation canals are directly comparable across different social contexts obscures the many cultural perceptions and behaviors that shape their development. Karl Wittfogel (1957) was not wrong in seeing irrigation as representative of society and power, but he oversimplified these entanglements, failing to look at the many complexities that shape these systems at highly localized scales (Hunt and Hunt et al 1976).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Irrigation in the Khorezm oasis, past and present: a political ecology perspective

Brite

2016

Journal of Political Ecology

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The Khorezm oasis sits at the epicenter of an environmental disaster. Since the late 19 th century, the continual expansion of irrigation in this region has altered the natural hydrology of the Amu Darya delta, leading to widespread desertification and the near total disappearance of the world's fourth largest lake, the Aral Sea. The situation is widely acknowledged as an environmental catastrophe of unprecedented scale, and yet it is not the first irrigation crisis in Khorezmian history. Numerous events of irrigation collapse are recorded in the archaeological record of this oasis, with many in the scientific community now very interested in this past record for its potential to inform on the modern crisis. Unfortunately, there has also been a tendency to overlook the different historical conditions that led to irrigation in this oasis over the last three millennia. In this article, I take an alternative approach that draws on political ecology's insights about the cultural embeddedness of environmental behavior. I compare two periods of irrigation in Khorezm, one ancient and the other modern, to show how the particular social contexts of each period shaped irrigation schemes in different ways. Significantly different design and implementation features are apparent in the ancient versus modern systems, with vastly different implications for environmental sustainability and human well-being. Keywords: water, irrigation, Aral Sea, archaeology, collapse, Soviet Union, nomadic pastoralism Résumé L'oasis de Khorezm se trouve à l'épicentre d'une catastrophe écologique. Depuis la fin du 19e siècle, l'expansion continue de l'irrigation dans cette région a modifié l'hydrologie naturelle du delta Amou-Daria. Cela a conduit à la désertification généralisée, et la disparition quasi totale de quatrième plus grand lac du monde, la mer d'Aral. La situation est largement reconnu comme une catastrophe environnementale à une échelle sans précédent, et pourtant il est pas la première crise de l'irrigation dans l'histoire du Khorezm. L'effondrement de l'irrigation a été enregistrée plusieurs fois dans le dans le dossier archéologique. Certains scientifiques pensent que le passé peut aider à comprendre la crise actuelle. Malheureusement, il ya également eu une tendance à négliger les différentes conditions historiques qui ont conduit à l'irrigation dans cette oasis, ce qui rend les comparaisons difficiles. Dans cet article, je prends une approche alternative qui attire sur les idées de l'écologie politique sur l'implantation culturelle du comportement environnemental. Je compare deux périodes de l'irrigation dans Khorezm, un ancien et l'autre moderne, pour montrer comment les contextes sociaux particuliers à chaque période ont contribué à créer les différents systèmes d'irrigation. Conception et réalisation étaient très différents, conduisant à des résultats différents pour la durabilité environnementale et le bien-être humain. Mots clés: l'eau, l'irrigation, la mer d'Aral, l'archéologie, l'effondrement, l'Union soviétique,...

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Canal Irrigation and Local Social Organization [and Comments and Reply]

Cited by 100 publications

References 10 publications

Traditional Farmer-Managed Irrigation System in Central Nigeria

Traditional Farmer-Managed Irrigation System in Central Nigeria

The Moral Economy of Water: Equity and Antiquity in the Andean Commons

Irrigation in the Khorezm oasis, past and present: a political ecology perspective

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