The irrigation technozone: State power, expertise, and agrarian development in the U.S. West and British Punjab, 1880–1920

Akhter, Majed; Ormerod, Kerri Jean

doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.01.012

Cited by 20 publications

(19 citation statements)

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“…The technocratic authority over water (including the legitimacy to produce and control representations of water) and political authority over populations and territory are intimately connected. Geographers have theorised this connection between water expertise and state formation in Spain (Camprub ı 2014; Swyngedouw 2015), the US West (Akhter and Ormerod 2015;Carroll 2012), West Asia (Harris andAlatout 2010;Mitchell 2002), East and Southeast Asia (Moore 2013; Sneddon 2015) and the Indus Basin in South Asia, which is the geographic focus of the present paper (Akhter 2015a(Akhter 2015bAli 1998;Michel 1967;Gilmartin 2015;Haines 2013Haines 2014Mustafa 2001Mustafa 2002Mustafa 2013. A powerful theme that cuts across these diverse historical-geographical contexts is the role of state experts as agents of depoliticisation.…”

Section: The State In Critical Resources Geographymentioning

confidence: 93%

“…The politics of nationalism decisively shape depoliticisation strategy at the intra‐state scale. Engineers must adapt moralistic narratives that are adapted to specific national contexts (Akhter and Ormerod ; Camprubí ; Kaika ; Swyngedouw ). The desire for the data state and depoliticisation does not stop at merely offering the most efficient or rational solution – it insists on the necessity of this solution to forestall national moral decline, and for national progress and development more broadly.…”

Section: Intra‐state Water Politics: Hydrocracy and The Politics Of Nmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Attention to scalar difference is a key methodological principle undergirding my analysis, as indeed it is for many water geographers (Akhter ; Harris and Alatout ; Mustafa ; Swyngedouw ). Geographers have examined the spatiality of water expertise, the shifting sites of authoritative knowledge production, and the role of regional political economy, in several contexts, including stream restoration (Lave ), the representation of watersheds and rivers (Cohen and Bakker ; Harris and Alatout ; Hwang ; Sneddon and Fox ; Swyngedouw ) and the global circulation of irrigation expertise (Akhter and Ormerod ). This paper takes a different route by comparing and connecting technocratic strategies of depoliticisation at two distinct but related scales.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Desiring the data state in the Indus Basin

Akhter

2016

Trans Inst British Geog

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The distribution of water between co‐riparian regions in the Indus Basin has been an extremely contentious issue since at least the early 20th century. The reliability of water measurements, in particular, has caused much controversy at multiple scales. This hydropolitical tension has catalysed a key social group – the hydraulic bureaucracy or ‘hydrocracy’ – to enact strategies of depoliticisation. These strategies aim to suppress political contest by calling on external expertise and/or technology to assure the objectivity of water measurement data. This paper draws on archival data and interviews with water engineers to argue that technocratic depoliticisation operates in distinct but related ways at different scales. Further, I argue that to analyse the technocratic desire for a data state – a state that governs primarily or exclusively by number and calculation – a multi‐scalar theoretical framework that connects the politics of technocracy, territory and nationalism is needed. The paper develops such a framework by situating hydrocrats and their strategies in the broader context of state formation. This framework is offered as a way for critical scholars of resources, development and expertise to engage with depoliticisation and repoliticisation of resource governance as complex geographic processes.

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Section: The State In Critical Resources Geographymentioning

confidence: 93%

Section: Intra‐state Water Politics: Hydrocracy and The Politics Of Nmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Desiring the data state in the Indus Basin

Akhter

2016

Trans Inst British Geog

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“…And indeed, the bureaucratic control of water via engineering technology and expertise, producing what Molle et al. () term “hydrocracies,” continues to be analysed by contemporary scholars who customarily draw on Wittfogel's ideas (Akhter & Ormerod, ; Swyngedouw, ; Worster, ). Here, the physical and symbolic mobilisation of water infrastructure has been shown to facilitate processes of territorialisation and state formation in a broad range of social and ecological contexts (Akhter, ; Carroll, ; Kaika, ; Mukerji, ; Swyngedouw, ; Usher, ).…”

Section: Metabolism Geopolitics and The Hydraulic Statementioning

confidence: 99%

Desali‐nation: Techno‐diplomacy and hydraulic state restructuring through reverse osmosis membranes in Singapore

Usher

2018

Trans Inst British Geog

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A sea change has occurred in global water management over the last two decades as previously unconventional technologies such as reverse osmosis membranes have been integrated into national supply networks. State-led, highly politicised programmes of water resources development, characterised by large-scale hydraulic infrastructure, centralised monopoly control and diplomatic negotiations, have been transformed in many regions by integrated systems supported by private engineering companies, constituting a new "technopolitical regime." Desalination in particular has become an expedient solution not only to the chronic problem of water scarcity but protracted geopolitical disputes over shared infrastructure. Engaging with literature on geopolitical materialism, technopolitics and the hydraulic state, this paper will examine how desalination has been developed in Singapore to depoliticise the water supply network, bringing into relation a different constellation of actors and enabling an alternative form of techno-diplomacy. In the 1990s, imported water from Malaysia became increasingly vulnerable due to a worsening of diplomatic relations, therefore Singapore began to leverage on reverse osmosis to circumvent antagonistic, politically charged negotiations. The water authority was subsequently plugged into global industry networks, technologically and institutionally reconfiguring the state through integrated management, corporate intermediaries and strategic nodality. By 2060, reverse osmosis technology is expected to provide 85% of water supply, co-producing, it is argued, an alternative state ontology.

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“…This approach, dominant in the 20th century, discursively and materially produced "modern water" as a way of knowing, quantifying, and representing water as a calculable physical entity, divorced from its socio-cultural contexts (Linton 2010). This understanding of water was reproduced in the offices of country-level water bureaucracies, which were largely managed by western-trained hydraulic engineers (Birkenholtz 2008;Akhter and Ormerod 2015). Ultimately, this has led to the proliferation of new modern ecological technologies (e.g., dams, treatment facilities, distribution networks, etc.)…”

Section: Developing Drinking Water?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Drinking Water

Birkenholtz¹

2016

SpringerBriefs in Global Understanding

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This chapter examines the ongoing global struggle to supply potable drinking water to the world's population. The chapter begins with a brief history of 20th century efforts to expand drinking water supply but argues that these efforts only resulted in partial successes. This was due to rapid demographic growth and to a dominant understanding of water scarcity as a technical problem to be solved through centralized engineering works. This paradigm is being challenged in the 21st century by an understanding of water as enmeshed in a hydrosocial cycle where social elements-including politics and economics-are intrinsic to the successful expansion of drinking water supply. Yet many issues remain, including (1) multiple kinds of water scarcity; (2) competition between different sectors; and (3) contestations surrounding cost recovery, commodification, and privatization. The chapter concludes with a discussion of water's future governance. People are no longer waiting for drinking water supplies to expand but are contesting water's meaning and engaging in participatory resistance to modes of water supply that undermine the human right to water.

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The irrigation technozone: State power, expertise, and agrarian development in the U.S. West and British Punjab, 1880–1920

Cited by 20 publications

References 40 publications

Desiring the data state in the Indus Basin

Desiring the data state in the Indus Basin

Desali‐nation: Techno‐diplomacy and hydraulic state restructuring through reverse osmosis membranes in Singapore

Drinking Water

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