Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

‘The Production of Space’, in: Frans Jacobi, Imagine, Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 1996, unpaginated.

The Production of Space

It’s been a long time since academic discussions about research and teaching were part of the board meetings of the department of Anthropology and Sociology of the University of Amsterdam. Most of our meetings today deal with administrative problems [...]

Seeing like a State.

Defining Environmental Justice: Theories, Movements, and Nature

"Oriental despotism : A Comparative Study of Total Power", Karl A. Wittfogel, Yale University Press, New-Haven 1957 : [recenzja] / Leszek Dzięgiel.

Large areas of the rural Lao landscape are being rapidly transformed by infrastructure development projects. Arguably, it is hydraulic development that is contributing most significantly to rural socio-ecological change, due to the profound socio-political ruptures dams precipitate. The nationally iconic Theun-Hinboun Hydropower Project, commissioned in 1998 and expanded in 2012, provides an illustrative case of hydropower’s complex social-ecological outcomes. Proponents have argued that the project represents a best-case example of planned, sustainable development, through successful mitigation of negative impacts and benefit-sharing with affected communities, and implemented in accordance with international good practice. This article questions the narratives of sustainability. It is argued that while the project could be considered successful in achieving certain economic objectives defined by the government and investors, evidence of social and environmental sustainability is questionable, rai...

Structural Injustice, Slow Violence? The Political Ecology of a 'Best Practice' Hydropower Dam in Lao PDR

The principal drivers of modern irrigation development in tropical Asia are widely understood to be political economy related factors such as demographics, changing diets, international food prices, globalization, urbanization, national food and energy policies, and increasingly, climate change. Such standard drivers of change tend to dominate mainstream water resources development discourse, embedded in instrumental and functional modes of thought and practice. Contrary to the dominant tendency in professional irrigation literature to rely on engineering or managerialist paradigms to conceptualize the field of water resources development, this thesis takes as its starting point an inherent recognition of the political and ideological nature of irrigation development, seen as an organizational tool for state control of people, society and water. This study is concerned with understanding the exercise of power and authority in societal irrigation development, through the analysis of a complex, cross-scalar, multi-actor case study in the context of Thailand, conceived of as an exemplar of a modern hydraulic society.
Examining a single river basin case study (the Nam Songkhram) in Thailand’s marginal Northeast and based on a mixed methods, inter-disciplinary approach, the empirical evidence suggests that a number of powerful actor groups in society, including hydraulic bureaucracies, the military, the private sector, national politicians and the monarchy, form alliances or “strategic groups” that compete to control the process of irrigation development at multiple scales and draw upon a range of material practices and discursive processes to further their individual and collective interests. The research contends that irrigation development is justified by socially constructed narrative framings located within the cultural and historical milieu of Thailand, understood to form part of a resilient and rather static nationalist-linked ideology (termed irrigationalism), employed in the reproduction and outward expansion of state power from the Bangkok-centric core to the periphery.

Irrigationalism : the politics and ideology of irrigation development in the Nam Songkhram Basin, Northeast Thailand

Negotiating trade-offs in water resources development in the Mekong Basin: implications for fisheries and fishery-based livelihoods

The present Thai monarch’s reputation in matters hydrological is an integral element of the mythology and symbolism that have characterised his reign. Royalists have carefully constructed the king as a semi-deified “Father of Thai Water Management”, “Royal Rainmaker”, wise inventor of hydraulic technology and planner of “royal initiatives” over a period of six decades. Yet, despite the links that are often drawn between water resources control, spiritual cosmology and political governance surrounding pre-modern Southeast Asian rulers, there has been surprisingly little critical scholarship undertaken on this contemporary aspect of kingship and state-making in Thailand. This paper examines the evolving discourse surrounding the monarchy and hydraulic development as a response to a perceived neglect regarding the central role of water in cementing the king’s power and legitimacy. It argues that King Bhumibol’s apparent hegemony in the national water resources governance paradigm has been an essentia...

King Bhumibol: The Symbolic “Father of Water Resources Management” and Hydraulic Development Discourse in Thailand

Mirroring trends elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Cambodia has witnessed a pronounced shift towards stricter authoritarianism over recent years. The state appears more firmly ruled by prime minister Hun Sen than at any time during the past three decades, while the de facto status of the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) more closely resembles the single party regimes of neighboring states. One of the major tools of political control and expansion of authority employed by the hierarchical CPP network is the construction of major infrastructure projects, most notably hydropower dams and irrigation schemes. This article focuses attention on the hydraulic infrastructure aspects of exacting political authority and social control by the elite over the nation, drawing upon Wittfogelian perspectives for a conceptual framework. It maintains that Cambodia increasingly represents a modern variant of a hydraulic society, but primarily functions as a satellite hydraulic state of China. The growing influence of China over Cambodia’s hydraulic development has helped elevate Hun Sen to resemble a neo-classic hydraulic despot. Hydraulic society concepts help provide partial understanding of contemporary power relations and party-state ascendency, including the longevity and resilience of Hun Sen’s supremacy.

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David J. H. Blake

Papers

Structural Injustice, Slow Violence? The Political Ecology of a 'Best Practice' Hydropower Dam in Lao PDR

Irrigationalism : the politics and ideology of irrigation development in the Nam Songkhram Basin, Northeast Thailand

Negotiating trade-offs in water resources development in the Mekong Basin: implications for fisheries and fishery-based livelihoods

King Bhumibol: The Symbolic “Father of Water Resources Management” and Hydraulic Development Discourse in Thailand

Recalling hydraulic despotism: Hun Sen’s Cambodia and the return of strict authoritarianism