Dikes and dams, thick with politics

ISIS

Volumn 98, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 109-123

  Bijker, Wiebe E ^a  

^a MAASTRICHT UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 34249279178     PISSN: 00211753     EISSN: 15456994     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/512835     Document Type: Article

References (45)

1. The Narmada Dam system in northwest India deserves an essay, an article, a book, a library of its own. For an eloquent and fiery indictment see Arundhati Roy, "The Greater Common Good," in The Algebra of Infinite Justice, ed. Roy (Delhi: Penguin, 1999).
2. For the other side's view see the Web site on the Sardar Sarovar, the largest dam of this system, which is currently being completed in the midst of legal fights, hunger strikes, and technical controversies: http://www.sardarsarovardam.org/.
3. To follow these fights see http://www.narmada.org/ and the publications of the South Asia Network on Dams, River, and People: http://www.sandrp.in/.
4. My discussion of the anicut technology in India is based on Chitra Krishnan, "Tank and Anicut Irrigation Systems: An Engineering Analysis" (Ph.D. diss., Indian Institute of Technology, 2003).
5. See also Krishnan and C. Shambu Prasad, "Technological and Policy Implications of Tank Systems: Reflections from Tank Irrigation in Kolar District, Karnataka," paper presented at the National Workshop on Rejuvenating Tanks for Sustainable Livelihoods: Emerging Trends, Patancheru, 2006;
6. and Krishnan and Srinivas V. Veeravalli, "Tanks and Anicuts of South India: Examples of an Alternative Science of Engineering," paper presented at the Compas Asian Regional Workshop on Traditional Knowledge Systems and Their Current Relevance and Applications, Bangalore, 3-5 July 2006.
7. The word "weir" is typically used for a straight dam across a river, perpendicular to the banks. Such weirs can be used, e.g., to create millponds feeding a side channel to power a watermill. The word "anicut" derives from the Tamil "anaikattu" and is typically reserved for longer dams that do cross the river but may have more complicated shapes.
8. In this section I will draw on the work of another Indian engineer-historian-sociologist: Esha Shah, Social Designs: Tank Irrigation Technology and Agrarian Transformation in Karnataka, South India (Wageningen University Water Resources Series, 4) (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 2003).
9. Wiebe E. Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs: Toward a Theory of Sociotechnical Change (Inside Technology) (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1995).
10. This point was first made, within the context of the philosophy of technology, in Langdon Winner, "Do Artifacts Have Politics?" Daedalus, 1980, 109:121-136.
11. See also Wiebe E. Bijker, "Why and How Technology Matters," in Oxford Handbook of Contextual Political Analysis, ed. Robert E. Goodin and Charles Tilly (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006), pp. 681-706.
12. Shah, Social Designs (cit. n. 4), p. 5,
13. quoting David Ludden, Peasant History in South India (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1985), p. 89.
14. Shah, Social Designs, pp. 38, 269.
15. Ibid., pp. 270-271. I am not sure how to assess the difference in effect between the hydraulic arguments and the newly acquired economic power of these farmers; a possible interpretation is that the local style of democracy values (scientific) arguments over sheer economic power, although their new economic standing must have helped the farmers get listened to in the first place.
16. Ibid., p. 5.
17. My point is not that tanks are inherently iniquitous and nonegalitarian but, rather, that a proper analysis of tanks should also investigate such issues as power relations and not be blinded by romanticized views of the past. Such an analysis could even include a wider social system and ecosystem than I have discussed here: e.g., conflicts between farmers and fishermen might play a role as well. Regarding the "temples of modernity" see the sources cited in note 1, above.
18. For more details see my research note: Wiebe E. Bijker, "American and Dutch Coastal Engineering: Differences in Risk Conception and Differences in Technological Culture," Social Studies of Science, 2007, 37:143-152.
19. I use the words "dike" and "levee" interchangeably. Both refer to elevated structures (mostly human-made, but sometimes natural) of sand, clay, and/or stone that are positioned along river or sea sides or around polders. "Levee" probably derives from the French "levee," "raised" (Chambers Twentieth Century Dictionary [Edinburgh: Chambers, 1983]). "Dike (or "dyke," "dik") is similar to the Dutch "dijk," which is thought to derive from the Latin "figere," "cut and then connect"; it thus seems related to "digging in." The use of "levee" rather than "dike" in English may also be spurred by an offensive slang meaning of "dike" (or, more often, the homonym "dyke"): "lesbian."
20. My proposal about the different sets of values incorporated by American levees and Dutch dikes is akin to the analysis of different national styles for technological systems of electricity distribution in Thomas P. Hughes's seminal volume Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (Baltimore/London: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1983).
21. The articles I will analyze are Eco W. Bijker, "History and Heritage in Coastal Engineering in the Netherlands," in History and Heritage of Coastal Engineering, ed. Nicholas C. Kraus (New York: American Society of Civil Engineers, 1996), pp. 390-412;
22. and Robert L. Wiegel and Thorndike Saville, "History of Coastal Engineering in the USA," ibid., pp. 513-600. Eco W. Bijker is Wiebe E. Bijker's father.
23. Wiegel and Saville, "History of Coastal Engineering in the USA," p. 519;
24. and E. Bijker, "History and Heritage in Coastal Engineering in the Netherlands," pp. 391, 392.
25. For a more comprehensive account of the early history of the water boards see Arne Kaijser, "System Building from Below: Institutional Change in Dutch Water Control Systems," Technology and Culture, 2002, 43:521-548.
26. E. Bijker, "History and Heritage in Coastal Engineering in the Netherlands," p. 395. For Vierlingh's 1579 manuscript see Andries Vierlingh, Tractaet Van Dyckagie (Nijhoff, 1920;'s-Gravenhage/ Rotterdam: Nederlandse Vereniging Kust- en Oeverwerken, 1973).
27. The analogy with Chitra Krishnan's analysis of anicut practice in India is striking: one of her conclusions is that the old anicuts worked so well because they sophisticatedly reshaped water currents and sedimentation processes, rather than trying to control all natural elements by force. (I have phrased this conclusion in my own words.)
28. Wiegel and Saville, "History of Coastal Engineering in the USA" (cit. n. 14), pp. 550, 549.
29. Of course, these casualties are minute in comparison to those caused by many flooding disasters elsewhere in the world. But for the Dutch, who were recovering from the war and rebuilding their nation, the effect was traumatic. For a more detailed account of the role of this disaster in the development of Dutch coastal defense and its relation to Dutch democracy see Wiebe E. Bijker, "The Politics of Water - the Oosterschelde Storm Surge Barrier: A Dutch Thing to Keep the Water Out or Not," in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy, ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005), pp. 512-529.
30. Wiegel and Saville, "History of Coastal Engineering in the USA" (cit. n. 14), pp. 538, 555.
31. In addition to differences in technological culture, geographical differences also play a role: there are no hurricanes in the Netherlands.
32. The design that was agreed upon in parliament, however, was deemed unworkable by the engineers, who then proceeded to design another open/ closed dam. The engineers involved scorned the politicians and generally professed to be sick of politics; at the same time, however, they recognized (and continue to acknowledge) that all things are thick with politics.
33. W. Bijker, Of Bicycles, Bakelites, and Bulbs (cit. n. 5).
34. For an analysis of various forms of socially constructed obduracy see A. M. Hommels, Unbuilding Cities: Obduracy in Urban Sociotechnical Change (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2005).
35. C. Shambu Prasad, "System of Rice Intensification in India: Implications for Promoting Pro-Poor Innovation: Report Submitted to United Nations University, Institute of New Technologies, under Dfid Project 'New Insights into Promoting Rural Innovation: Lessons from Civil Society"' (Maastricht: United Nations Univ., Inst. New Technologies, 2005), p. 4.
36. See also Prasad, System of Rice Intensification in India: Innovation History and Institutional Challenges (Patancheru: ICRISAT, 2006);
37. Prasad, Prajit K. Basu, and Andy Hall, "Assessing System of Rice Intensification as a Process: Evidence from India," paper presented at the Fourth Annual IWMI TATA Partners Meeting on "Bracing up for the Future," IRMA, Anand, 24-26 Feb. 2005;
38. and Krishnan and Prasad, "Technological and Policy Implications of Tank Systems" (cit. n. 2).
39. For an overview of the current state of the art in SRI see Norman Uphoff et al., eds., Assessments of the System of Rice Intensification (SRI) (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell International Institute for Food, Agriculture, and Development, 2002).
40. C. Shambut Prasad, "Dissent and Innovation: Science and Civil Society in India," paper presented at the International Symposium on the Culture of Innovation in Indian Science and Technology: Opportunities Seized and Opportunities Lost, Hyderabad, 2006.
41. Regarding AIDS patients' involvement in scientific research see Steven Epstein, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 1996);
42. on patients with muscular dystrophy see M. Callon and V. Rabeharisoa, "Research 'in the Wild' and the Shaping of New Social Identities," Technology in Society, 2003, 25:193-204.
43. Krishnan and Prasad, "Technological and Policy Implications of Tank Systems" (cit. n. 2), p. 17.
44. W. Bijker, "American and Dutch Coastal Engineering" (cit. n. 12).
45. Medha Patkar, ed., River Linking: A Millennium Folly? (Mumbai: National Alliance of People's Movements, 2004).