Ethnographic conversations with Wittfogel’s ghost: An introduction

Abstract

This theme issue re-engages the ghost of Wittfogel in ethnographically grounded conversations around the imbrication of water, power, and infrastructure. It examines social and political relations in ways that take their tensions and correspondences with water seriously, as Wittfogel did half a century ago, but in a less monolithic and totalizing manner. Instead, the contributions pay attention to the situated, partial, multiple, and open-ended encounters that (un)make these links. Together, the papers collected in this theme issue build a critical conversation around the role of water in configuring and reproducing power. Its major threads are the construction of authority through water, the social complexity of water relations, and the interrelationships between water, infrastructure, and political rule.

Geographies of inland waterscapes: Thinking with watery places

“…In human geography, a lot of important work has been done in the framework of political ecology (Swyngedouw et al., 2002), especially through the notion of the hydrosocial cycle (Linton & Budds, 2014), focusing particularly on the political governance aspects of water as well as the waterways' importance to planning, including its socio‐ecological implications (Swyngedouw, 2015; Karpouzoglou & Vij, 2017). Extant research also deals with politics, policies, justice, inequalities and (mis)management of drinking water resources (Kaika, 2003; Sultana & Loftus, 2019; Ley & Krause, 2019; Scott & Larkin, 2019; Lavie et al., 2020), as well as the legal status (and rights) of water bodies (Charpleix, 2018; Boyd, 2017; Clark et al., 2018). Attention has also been paid to the geographies of those communities who permanently dwell on inland waters (Smith, 2007; Bowles, 2017; Roberts, 2019) or who engage with inland waters in the context of tourism and leisure (Prideaux & Cooper, 2009; Kaaristo, 2020).…”

Making Waves: The Role of Indigenous Water Beings in Debates about Human and Non‐Human Rights

“…The area of water ownership and rights therefore remains contentious (Bakker 2010; Bieler 2017). Water is always reflective of political realities and, as Wittfogel's (1957) seminal work observed, people's rights to water accurately mirror the power relations within and between societies ( see also Anand 2017; Bichsel et al 2016; Krause and Ley 2019; Mosse 2003).…”