Concrete ‘progress’: irrigation, development and modernity in mid-twentieth century Sind

Haines, Daniel

doi:10.1017/s0026749x10000259

Cited by 8 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…The perceived lethargy of ‘ancient’ customary farming, deplored for its ‘wastefulness’ and acceptance of nature's limits, was indicative of wider colonial perceptions of traditional ‘Oriental’ cultures as ‘fatalist’ (Said, ). When it came to water management and flood control, perennial irrigation purported to overcome this backward mentality; as such it was framed in opposition to the traditional cultivator's trust in kismat [fate] (Haines, : 194).…”

Section: Islam Modernism and The God Of Big Thingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disaster cosmologies in comparative perspective: Islam, climate change and the 2010 floods in Pakistan's Southern Punjab

Ahmad¹

2019

J Historical Sociology

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As humanity enters a new era of climate-induced unpredictability, research into the role of religion in shaping perceptions of, and responses to disaster will become increasingly important. This is particularly true of South Asia, which contains dense populations certain to be adversely affected by climate change. This contribution explores the way religion shapes and mediates responses to disaster in Pakistan.Where previous work in this field has focused on extremists and militants, mine considers currents of lived Islam that take explicit stances on questions of natural resource development. Drawing upon extensive primary data, I identify two distinct disaster cosmologies permeating state and society. First, I consider the official Islam of experts and policymakers, whose approach to development is derived from, but arguably surpasses the modernism of British and American colonial and Cold War paradigms in its dogmatic, faith-based belief in the imperative of mastering and exploiting nature. The second is an altogether contrasting formation embedded in a political protest movement representing a marginalized constituency, the Siraiki speaking population of Southern Punjab, which mobilized flood affectees in the aftermath of the 2010 floods around issues of social and environmental justice.More than mere physical events, disasters challenge us to explain the cosmological order, raising profound philosophical and ethical questions pertaining to God, human agency and the natural world. Understanding the relationship between religion and disaster is imperative at the current historical juncture, shaped as it is by the onset of climate change as reality and looming imaginative threat (Hulme, 2016). Proponents of the term, 'Anthropocene,'argue that the current geological epoch will present the most searching philosophical and existential questions for believers and non-believers alike since Darwin's theory of evolution (Steffen, Grinevald, Crutzen, & McNeill, 2011). The socio-political ramifications are no less great: confessional belief will almost certainly shape and mediate responses to disaster in the Asian subcontinent, a region which, by all accounts, will be hit harder by global warming than any other in the world (AFP, 2010;Bhatiya, 2014;Worland, 2017). In Pakistan, the role of Islamist militants in post-disaster rehabilitation has been widely reported and studied in some detail (Crilly, 2010;Siddiqi, 2014).Beyond religious extremism, however, little is known about the way faith figures in dominant narratives about the natural environment; nor about its role in motivating those who contest this hegemony through oppositional protest and political mobilization.This article addresses these problems through a comparative study of two distinct religious frameworks of disaster. The latter are explored within the context of their respective social and political bases within Pakistani state and society. I begin with a review of the small but significant body of social scientific research into the multidimensional rel...

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Section: Islam Modernism and The God Of Big Thingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Disaster cosmologies in comparative perspective: Islam, climate change and the 2010 floods in Pakistan's Southern Punjab

Ahmad¹

2019

J Historical Sociology

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“…These data can reveal interactions between social and environmental processes. 56 Taxcollection requires a detailed official knowledge of land tenure systems and population information, which can be used to reconstruct past settlement patterns. 57 In combination with physical and geomorpological research into landscape change, such records can demonstrate the effect that environmental instability had on settlements over time.…”

Section: History Politics and Water Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…State archives and historical literature typically contain official reports, unofficial manuscript material, images and maps. These data can reveal interactions between social and environmental processes . Tax‐collection requires a detailed official knowledge of land tenure systems and population information, which can be used to reconstruct past settlement patterns .…”

Section: History Politics and Water Managementmentioning

confidence: 99%

The changing water cycle: the need for an integrated assessment of the resilience to changes in water supply in High‐Mountain Asia

Quincey¹,

Klaar²,

Haines³

et al. 2017

WIREs Water

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Water sourced from Asian mountains is vital to the survival of an estimated 1.4 billion people, but current and anticipated changes in snow, ice cover, and precipitation patterns may threaten these supplies and, in turn, the food security of tens of millions of people. Despite the severity of this developing environmental hazard, the relative importance of each component of the water cycle still needs more detailed study so that those communities who will experience the greatest extremes in supply can be identified. Specifically, data showing how the contribution of meltwater varies with increasing distance downstream are lacking for many mountain catchments, although the use of stable isotope tracers provides some hope in this regard. Imprinted on regional-scale hydroclimatological controls of water availability are local-scale cultural beliefs and practices that have evolved over centuries, which determine who is able to access water supplies, for how long, and for what purpose. Building the resilience of human populations and the environment to future changes in water supply therefore depends on effective interdisciplinary team working to develop an understanding of the complex interactions between physical, socioeconomic, cultural, and historical factors, and that can only be properly realized if local communities are considered as an integral part of the research team. Developing simple and practical methods for water management, storage, and societal adaptation that are appropriate to the socioeconomic and political conditions of mountain-dwelling communities will only be sustainable if they are built on this integrated knowledge base.

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“…In South Asia, hydraulic engineering was particularly prestigious. Top-down human intervention into the Indus Rivers system had a long and, at the time, honoured tradition in both India and Pakistan (Gilmartin 1994, Haines 2011). Lilienthal's deployment of engineers as a particular kind of actor deserves further explanation, which I give below.…”

Section: Technocracy To the Rescuementioning

confidence: 99%

(Inter)Nationalist rivers?: cooperative development in David Lilienthal’s plan for the Indus Basin, 1951

Haines

2013

Water Hist

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Sharing water resources in the Indus Basin, split between India and Pakistan and 1947, helped sour relations between these hostile neighbours until the signing of the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960. This article explores a radical early intervention into the dispute. David E Lilienthal, an American development expert, published a plan for trans-border cooperative development in 1951. He used a discourse of technocratic internationalism to privilege shared expertise over political difference. His proposal, I argue, tried to align politics in the Indus Basin with a constructed notion of the basin itself as a "natural" entity, contrasted with the political boundaries that divided India from Pakistan. I show how Lilienthal's appeal to engineers to effect a "scale jump", shifting the waters dispute from a nationalist to an internationalist plane, reinforced an existing reliance in South Asia on technocratic water management. While subsequent negotiations dropped his proposal for cooperative development, his novel use of the idea of engineering to produce the basin as a depoliticised space helped to frame the terms of the debate. The paper is based on material from diplomatic archives in the United States and the United Kingdom.

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Concrete ‘progress’: irrigation, development and modernity in mid-twentieth century Sind

Cited by 8 publications

References 5 publications

Disaster cosmologies in comparative perspective: Islam, climate change and the 2010 floods in Pakistan's Southern Punjab

Disaster cosmologies in comparative perspective: Islam, climate change and the 2010 floods in Pakistan's Southern Punjab

The changing water cycle: the need for an integrated assessment of the resilience to changes in water supply in High‐Mountain Asia

(Inter)Nationalist rivers?: cooperative development in David Lilienthal’s plan for the Indus Basin, 1951

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