This course offers an interdisciplinary exploration of "water politics" -- that is, the political dimensions of human manipulation of water, wetlands and watersheds. While the substantive focus is water, the course is designed to provide a broader introduction to social-scientific theorizing about human-environment relations; it is thus of interest also to students not specializing in water-related topics.

Employing a range of geographically diverse case studies, we examine major topics in water politics, including: large-scale hydrodevelopment and grassroots resistance thereto (as a subset of the contested history of international development policy more broadly); the governance and use of common-pool resources; the emergence of participatory and community-based water management policies; the "neoliberalization" of water resources through privatization, marketization and commodification; and conflict and cooperation in the governance of transboundary waters. Our examination is guided analytically by themes central to the environmental social sciences:  power; political economy; institutions; discourse; and the social embeddedness of science.  Drawing from not only political science but also geography, sociology, anthropology and other disciplines, course readings provide the necessary basic background in social theory to make this analytical approach accessible to students with little training in social sciences.

A central objective of the course is thus to provide analytical tools f or thinking critically about how and why water resource policies are crafted and implemented in particular ways. How, for example,  is the deployment of scientific and technical expertise in water resource policymaking a fundamentally political enterprise? Why did the 20th-century witness such grandiose efforts at hydro-engineering, and what types of governing institutions and political alliances were required for the realization of these efforts? Why has "development" been such a powerful discourse in the post-WWII, post-colonial era, and at the same time why has it wrought such spectacular environmental damage while failing to improve human welfare? Why have neoliberal policies recently become so widespread in water resource management, and what are the social and political consequences of this policy shift?

Required Reading

Course Assignments

The requirements for this class are as follows:

• 15% - attendance and participation, including serving once as class discussant
  
• 70% - SIX short summary papers on assigned readings (3-4 pp.)
  
• 15% - final essay (5-7 pp.; further details provided in class)
  

Schedule of Classes

Week 1: 8/25    INTRODUCTIONS

• Jacques Leslie, "Running dry: What happens when the world no longer has enough freshwater?" Harper's, July 2000: 37-52

Week 3: 9/8    Hydraulic civilization: technology, bureaucracy and capitalism

• Donald Worster, Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (Oxford, 1985)
  
• Rogers Brubaker, The Limits of Rationality: An Essay on the Social and Moral Thought of Max Weber (Routledge, 1984/2006), pp. 8-48
  
• Paul R. Josephson, Industrialized Nature: Brute Force Technology and the Transformation of the Natural World (Island Press, 2002), pp. 1-68

Week 4: 9/15    Hydrodevelopment and contested meanings of water

• Richard White, The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River (Hill and Wang, 1995)
• William Cronon, "Introduction: In Search of Nature," in Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature (W.W. Norton, 1996), pp. 23-56
• David J. Hess, Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction (NYU Press, 1997), pp. 6-51, 128-134
  

Week 5: 9/22    The politics of policymaking:  science, discourse and power/knowledge   

• Christopher Ham and Michael Hill, The Policy Process in the Modern Capitalist State (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993), pp. 22-47
• Lamont C. Hempel, Environmental Governance: The Global Challenge (Island Press, 1996), pp. 151-199
  
• James Keeley and Ian Scoones, Understanding Environmental Policy Processes: Cases from Africa (Earthscan, 2003), pp. 21-39
• John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley (U. Illinois, 1980), pp. 3-20
  
• Mark Philip, "Michel Foucault," in Quentin Skinner, ed., The Return of Grand Theory in the Human Sciences (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 65-81

Week 6: 9/29    Policy, science and institutions: the Everglades

• Laura Ogden, "The Everglades Ecosystem and the Politics of Nature," American Anthropologist 110, 1 (2008): 21-32
• Mary Dengler, "Spaces of power for action: Governance of the Everglades Restudy process (1992-2000)," Political Geography 26 (2007): 423-454
• Neeraj Vedwan et al., "Institutional Evolution in Lake Okeechobee Management in Florida," Water Resources Management 22 (2008): 699-718
• David Policansky, "Science and decision making for water resources," Ecological Applications 8, 3 (1998): 610-618
  

Week 7: 10/6    The politics of international development policy

• Wolfgang Sachs, ed., The Development Dictionary: A Guide to Knowledge as Power (Zed Books, 1992), pp. 1-25
  
• Arturo Escobar, "The Making and Unmaking of the Third World Through Development," in Majid Rahnema and Victoria Bawtree, eds., The Post-Development Reader (Zed Books, 1997), pp. 85-93
• Susan George and Fabrizio Sabelli, Faith and Credit: The World Bank's Secular Empire (Westview Press, 1994), pp. 1-20
• Bruce M. Rich, "Multi-Lateral Development Banks: Their Role in Destroying the Global Environment," The Ecologist 15, 1/2 (1985): 56-68
• Stephan Schwartzman, Bankrolling Disasters: International Development Banks and the Global Environment (Sierra Club, 1986)
• Bruce M. Rich, Mortgaging the Earth: The World Bank, Environmental Impoverishment, and the Crisis of Development (Beacon Press, 1994), pp. 200-241
• Vandana Shiva, "Poverty and Globalization," BBC Reith Lectures (2000), http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_2000/lecture5.stm
• William Easterly, "The Ideology of Development," Foreign Policy July/August 2007: 31-35
  

• Patrick McCully, Silenced Rivers: The Ecology and Politics of Large Dams (Zed Books, 1996), pp. 1-28, 281-311
• William F. Fisher, "Development and Resistance in the Narmada Valley," in Fisher, ed., Toward Sustainable Development: Struggling Over India's Narmada River (M.E. Sharpe, 1995), pp. 3-46
• C. C. Patel, "The Sardar Sarovar Project: A Victim of Time," in ibid., pp. 71-88
• Thomas A. Blinkhorn and William T. Smith, "India's Narmada: River of Hope," in ibid., pp. 89-112
• Medha Patkar, "The Struggle for Participation and Justice: A Historical Narrative," in ibid., pp. 157-178
• Arundhati Roy, "The Greater Common Good," in The Cost of Living (Modern Library, 1999), pp. 7-90; or at http://www.narmada.org/gcg/gcg.html
• William F. Fisher, "Going Under: Indigenous Peoples and the Struggle Against Large Dams," Cultural Survival Quarterly 23, 3 (1999): 29-32

• Michael Goldman, Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalization (Yale, 2005)
• James Ferguson with Larry Lohmann, "The Anti-Politics Machine: 'Development' and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho," The Ecologist 24, 5 (1994): 176-181

Week 10: 10/27   CPRs and CBRM

• Elinor Ostrom et al., "Revisiting the Commons: Local Lessons, Global Challenges," Science 284 (9 Apil 1999): 278-282
• Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 29-57
  
• Arun Agrawal and Clark C. Gibson, "Enchantment and Disenchantment: The Role of Community in Natural Resource Conservation," World Development 27,4  (1999): 629-649
• David Mosse, "The Symbolic Making of a Common Property Resource: History, Ecology and Locality in a Tank-irrigated Landscape in South India," Development and Change 28 (1997): 467-450
• Frances Cleaver, "Moral Ecological Rationality, Institutions and the Management of Common Property Resources," Development and Change 31 (2000): 361-383
• Melissa Leach, Robin Mearns and Ian Scoones, "Environmental Entitlements: Dynamics and Institutions in Community-Based Natural Resource Management," World Development 27,2  (1999): 225-247
  

• Deborah Moore and Leonard Sklar, "Reforming the World Bank's Lending for Water: The Process and Outcome of Developing a Water Resources Management Policy," in Jonathan A. Fox and L. David Brown, eds., The Struggle for Accountability: The World Bank, NGOs, and Grassroots Movements (MIT, 1998), pp. 345-390
• Libor Jansky et al., "Enhancing public participation and governance in water resources management," in Libor Jansky and Juha I. Uitto, eds., Enhancing Participation and  Governance in Water Resources Management (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2005), pp. 3-18
• Syafruddin Karimi, "Public participation and water resources management: The case of West Sumatra," in ibid., pp. 21-32
• Anthony R. Turton and Anton Earle, "Public participation in the development of a management plan for an international river basin: The Okavango case," in ibid., pp. 33-52
• Alfred M. Duda and Juha I. Uitto, "Improving public involvement and governance for transboundary water systems: Process tools used by the Global Environment Facility," in ibid., pp. 157-179
• Prachoom Chomchai, "Public participation and governance: A Mekong River basin perspective," in ibid., pp. 180-216

• James McCarthy and Scott Prudham, "Neoliberal nature and the nature of neoliberalism," Geoforum 35, 3 (2004): 275-283
• Becky Mansfield, "Privatization: Property and the Remaking of Nature-Society Relations," Antipode 39, 3 (2007): 393-405
• Becky Mansfield, "Property, Markets, and Dispossession: the Western Alaska Community Development Quota as Neoliberalism, Social Justice, Both, and Neither," Antipode 39, 3 (2007): 479-499
  
• Morgan M. Robertson, "No Net Loss: Wetland Restoration and the Incomplete Capitalization of Nature," Antipode 32:4 (2000): 463-493
• Morgan Robertson, "Discovering Price in All the Wrong Places: The Work of Commodity Definition and Price under Neoliberal Environmental Policy," Antipode 39, 3 (2007): 500-526
  

Week 13: 11/17    NO CLASS

Week 14: 11/24    Neoliberalizing nature: the great privatization debate

• Jennifer Davis, "Private-Sector Participation in the Water and Sanitation Sector," Annual Review of Environmental Resources 30 (2005): 145-83
• Jessica Budds and Gordon McGranahan, "Are the debates on water privatization missing the point? Experiences from Africa, Asia and Latin America," Environment and Urbanization 15, 2 (2003): 87-113
• David A. McDonald and Greg Ruiters, eds., The Age of Commodity: water privatization in Southern Africa (Earthscan, 2005) SELECTED CHAPTERS TBA
• Karen Bakker, "The 'Commons' Versus the 'Commodity': Alter-globalization, Anti-privatization and the Human Right to Water in the Global South," Antipode 39, 3 (2007): 430-455
  
• Scott Prudham, "Poisoning the well: neoliberalism and the contamination of municipal water in Walkerton, Ontario," Geoforum 35, 3 (2004): 343-359
• Wade Graham, "A hundred rivers run through it: California floats its future on a market for water," Harper's, June 1998
• RECOMMENDED: Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, Blue Gold: The Fight to Stop the Corporate Theft of the World's Water (New York: The New Press, 2002)
• OR: Vandana Shiva, Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit (Cambridge: South End Press, 2002)
  

Week 15: 12/1    Transboundary waters: security, conflict and cooperation

• Jan Selby, "Oil and Water: The Contrasting Anatomies of Resources Conflicts," Government and Opposition 40, 2 (2005): 200-224
• Nevelina I. Pachova et al., eds., International Water Security: Domestic Threats and Opportunities (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2008)

Week 16: 12/8   wrap-up