Call for Papers: Interdisciplinary Workshop on Water, Technology and the Nation-State
The University of Manchester, School of Environment, Education and Development, Geography.
28 October 2016
Water
is a quintessential component for life and for the development of
societies. Water is also an irreplaceable and transient resource, which
crosses political boundaries in the form of rivers, lakes and
groundwater aquifers. Due to its unique nature, governments tend to
perceive and portray water as a national asset constituting an integral
part of “the homeland”. Just like space, territory and
society can be socially and politically constructed by a national elite
to assert its power (Swyngedouw, 2007). This is also the case for the
management of water resources. As a result, the construction of a large
hydraulic infrastructure, such as for instance
a major dam or a canal, can be surrounded by a rhetorical discourse
that emphasises its contribution to a prosperous future and to the
realisation of national goals while nurturing national development and
progress. This process can thus overlap with the formation
of a national identity to the extent that a dam comes to symbolize the
nation (Menga, 2015).
The
aim of this workshop is to further our understanding of the complex and
often hidden connection between water and the nation building process,
here defined as the set of policies aimed at creating a common national
identity and a sense of patriotism and loyalty toward the state.
The workshop will be opened by a
keynote from Prof Erik Swyngedouw, University of Manchester, titled “Not a Drop of Water...: State, Modernity and the Production of Nature in Spain, 1998-2010”.
With
a view to a subsequent publication in a journal's special issue, we
invite both empirically grounded and theoretical critical work from
a wide range of disciplines (including human geography, political
science, international relations, environmental history, nationalism
studies and sociology) that address, but are not limited to, the
following questions and topics:
·
In what ways water as a resource can be
ideologically constructed, imagined and framed by a ruling elite to
create and reinforce a national identity?
·
Is it appropriate to advance the notion of
‘water nationalism’ (Allouche, 2005) to define the combination of the
state-building and nation-building processes over water?
·
Can the current boom in the dam building
sector be interpreted as a twenty-first century revamp of the ideology
of high modernism (Scott, 1998)?
·
Can the construction of a large hydraulic
infrastructure be considered a nation-building tool, and how does this
overlap with the nation-building process? In contested river basins, how
does this influence inter-state relations?
·
Can we observe ‘techno-nationalism’ (i.e.,
the pride stemming from producing and exporting state of the art
technology) (Edgerton, 2007) also when a large hydraulic infrastructure
is being constructed with foreign technology?
·
Can the state be physically constructed out
of a material water infrastructure (Carroll, 2012), and in what ways can
we observe this phenomenon in the contemporary world?
Interested
participants should send their abstracts (max 300 words) and a short
bio (100 words) with contact details to the workshop organiser
Dr Filippo Menga filippo.menga@manchester.ac.uk by
May 13, 2016. Authors will be notified of acceptance by May 31, 2016.
A PDF of the call for papers can be found at the following link
http://bit.ly/1SwRDHT.
The
organisation of this workshop is receiving funding from the European
Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie
Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 654861.
References
Allouche, J. (2005).
Water nationalism: An explanation of the past and present conflicts
in Central Asia, the Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent?
(Doctoral dissertation, Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales).
Carroll, P. (2012).
Water, and Technoscientific State Formation in California.
Social Studies of Science, 42(4).
Edgerton, D. E. (2007). The contradictions of techno-nationalism and techno-globalism: A historical perspective.
New Global Studies, 1(1).
Menga, F. (2015). Building a nation through a dam: the case of Rogun in Tajikistan.
Nationalities Papers, 43(3).
Scott, J.C., 1998.
Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Swyngedouw, E., 2007. Technonatural revolutions: the scalar politics of Franco's hydro-social dream for Spain, 1939–1975.
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 32(1).