A History of Water series explores all aspects of water – social, cultural, political, religious, historical, economic and technological - from ancient times to the present day. The contributors examine the changing histories of water as a private or common good; the politics of water at local, urban, national and international level; water in cities; great river plans; dams; river biographies; and images of water in religion, myth, literature and art. Empirical and ethnographic case studies from around the world feature.

VOLUME I: Water Control and River Biographies
Editors: T. Tvedt & E. Jakobsson

Description

This book with narratives of water control from all over the world can give a vivid sense of a human past that in certain aspects can be seen as fundamentally shared. While there may be nothing that appropriately can be called universal values, water control is definitely a universal predicament. Water control in one form or another is one thing which all people at all times have had and will always have in common, and they will forever have to adapt to, and to control, the water that runs through their societies.

Contents

Introduction: Water History is World History (Terje Tvedt and Eva Jacobsson)

Part I: Great Plans
Seizing Favours from Nature: The Rise and Fall of Siberian River Diversion (D.F. Duke) • The World’s Largest Contiguous Irrigation System: Developments, Successes and Challenges of the Indus Irrigation System in Pakistan (M.A. Kahlown, A.D. Khan and M. Azam) • Of Flumes, Modules and Barrels: The Failure of Irrigation Institutions and Technologies to Achieve Equitable Water Control in the Indus Basin (G.E. van Halsema and L. Vincent) • Controlling the Waters in Twentieth-century China: The Nationalist State and the Huai River (D.A. Pietz) • The Chinese Way of Harnessing Rivers: The Yangtze River (F. Padovani) • Water Control and Agricultural Development: Crafting Deltaic Environments in South-East Asia (F. Molle and D.T. Tuân) • Environmental Risk in Water Resources Management in the Mekong Delta: A Multi-Scale Analysis (F. Miller) • Living with Water: Bangladesh Since Ancient Times (A. Kamal)

Part II: River Biographies

The History of the Tama River: Social Reconstructions (M.W. Steele) • ‘Seeing Like the Prussian State’: Re-engineering the Rivers of Rhineland and Westphalia (M. Cioc) • The River has Recorded the Story, Living with the Hawkesbury River, Sydney, NSW, Australia (B. Simmons and J. Scott) • Poverty, Water and Environmental Degradation: The Langat River Basin, Malaysia (C. Siwar and S. Idrus)

Part III: Water in Cities

Water and Wastes in Medieval London (R.J. Magnusson) • Critical Decisions in Pittsburgh Water and Wastewater Treatment (J.A. Tarr and T.F. Josie) • Water, Modernity and the Demise of the Bacteriological City (M. Gandy) • Socio-Economic Implications of Water Supply in Nigerian Urban Centres: The Case of Ibadan (I.O. Adelekan) • The Political Ecology of Water Supply in Chennai, South India (E. Weber)

Part IV: Organizing Water

Keeping Running Water Clean: Mining and Pollution in Preindustrial Japan (P.G. Sippel) • Management of Wetlands in Relation to River Basins- a Study from South-West India (E.J. James) • Public Water Supply in Guernsey, Channel Islands: Engineers, Entrepreneurs, Ownership and Control in an Island Setting (V. Gardiner) • The Mfongo Irrigation Systems on the Slopes of Mt Kilimanjaro, Tanzania (M. Tagseth) • Alkalinity, Salinity and California Irrigation: The Role of Eugene Woldemar Hilgard (W.E. Pittman)

Part V: Debating Water

The Rescue of English Coastal Waters and the Role of Environmental Pressure Groups (J. Hassan) • Management of the Mekong River Basin: Contesting its Sustainability from a Communication Perspective (M.T. Lang) • The Bío–Bío Project and the Mapuche-Pehuenche People of Chile (I. Norbø)
 • Contributors • Index

About the Editors:

T. Tvedt is Research Director in the Faculty of Social Science, University of Bergen and a Panel Member of UNESCO’s World Water Assessment Program.

E. Jakobsson is the Senior Research Scientist at Stavanger University College, Norway.

VOLUME II: The Political Economy of Water

Editors: T. Tvedt & R. Coopey

Description

The contributors to this volume use a range of methods and hypotheses to probe the complexity inherent in the history of water and its provision. In measuring the extent to which provision went to one sector of the population rather than another, and the ramifications of this, Schmid and Hallström, for example, emphasise the utility of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) methodology, amongst a number of techniques they employ. Their study of Linkopping and Norkopping in Sweden constructs a spatial and temporal analysis which enables light to be shed on issues of unequal provision and its origins, and to track the development of water technologies and systems.

Contents
 
 Introduction: Water as a Unique Commodity (Richard Coopey and Terje Tvedt)

Part I: Urban and Local Water Politics

The Pipe-Bound City in Time and Space: Applying GIS to the Historical Development of Two Cities (T. Schmid Neset and J. Hallström) • Inequities in Urban Water Supply in India: Municipalities in Andhra Pradesh (C. Ramachandraiah) • Social Movements and Conflict over Water in Mexico (P. Avila) • Inequality and Social Exclusion: Access to Drinking Water in Cochabamba, Bolivia (C. Ledo)

Part II: National Water Politics

Wittfogel and Hydraulic Despotism (Neville Brown) • Reshaping the ‘Political’: The Nile Waters of the Sudan (M. El Zain) • Water Resource Administration and Racial Inequality in South West Africa (J. B. Forrest) • British Colonial Water Legislation in Mandatory Palestine (K. Gaarde) • A Retreat from Centralised Water Management? The Israeli Case (E. Feitelson) • Market-Oriented Sustainable Water Resource Management in China (X. Mao) • Water and the Transformation of Agriculture in Bulgaria (M. Ilieva and I. Iliev) • Irrigation and State Formation in Ancient Korea (B. W. Kang) • Water and Development in Cambodia: A Historical Perspective (C. Sophal and S. Acharya) • Gender, Poverty and Water in Pakistan (M. Khan-Tirmizi)

Part III: International Hydropolitics

The Nile as a Legal and Political Structure (J. W. Dellapenna) • Nile Basin Co-operation: Prospects for the Twenty-First Century (Y. Arsano) • Transboundary Water Resources: Mexico, the USA and the Water Treaty (B. Sanchez) • Developing Lesotho’s Water Resources: The Lesotho Highlands Water Scheme (M. Thabane) • Great Lakes Fisheries: International Response to their Decline and the Lamprey/Alewife Invasion (P. Scarpino) • Energy and Environmental Security: The Syr Darya Crisis of Central Asia (K. Lange) • Fish vs. Power: Salmon, Science and Society on the Fraser River (M. Evenden)

Part IV: Water Law and Legal Issues

Water Quality as Property: Industrial Water Pollution and Riparian Law in Nineteenth-Century USA (J. Paavola) • Regimes, Regulations and Rights: Urban Water Use in the Kathmandu Valley (A. Regmi) • Water as Property in the American West (R. B. Naeser and M. Griffin Smith) • Changing Water Rights in Mexico: Local Availability and the Reallocation of Groundwater Rights (G. V. Dyrnes and B. Marañón-Pimentel)

Part V: Theoretical Issues

My Land, My Water, Your Problem: Co-dynamic Processes and the Development of Appropriate Water Policy Tools (P. Jeffrey, M. Lemon and B. Jefferson)
• Contributors • Index •

About the Editors:

R. Coopey is with the Department of History at the University of Aberystwyth. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts. University College, Norway.

T. Tvedt is Research Director in the Faculty of Social Science, University of Bergen and a Panel Member of UNESCO’s World Water Assessment Program.

VOLUME III: The World of Water

Editors: T. Tvedt & T. Oestigaard

Description

This volume is an attempt to present the complex picture of how water has been conceptualized as a medium for control and social hierarchy, for understanding and cultural elaboration, and for religious and divine interaction, all interdependent spheres, each necessitating the other. Water is both nature and culture, and its profound character makes the substance unique in the context of social construction, having epistemological and ontological consequences for both the social and natural sciences. The chapters aim to convey the idea that with water as a point of departure it is possible to re-work dominant conceptual legacies about nature and society and ‘realism’ and ‘constructivism’, and to overcome the nature-society dualism in traditional analyses. Humans live in worlds of water: water is used to define human life-worlds and the worlds are sustained through water.

Contents

Introduction (Terje Tvedt and Terje Oestigaard)

Part I: Water as Commons or Commodity?

Water in the Age of Imperialism – and Beyond (D. Worster) • From Sacred Ownership to Colonial Commons: Water Tenure Systems in Central Africa (D. Gordon) • Changing Narratives of Water Control in Hawai’i (K. A. Berry) • ‘Indigenous People Participation’: Conflict in Water Use in an African Mining Economy (F. A. Akiwumi)

Part II: Water as a Symbol of Power

Powering the Nation: A Social History of Hydro-electricity in Ireland (M. Maguire) • Water as a Symbol of Power: The Hydraulic System of Gôlkonda, Hyderabad (Y. C. Wong and V. Kallianpur)

Part III: Water as Hierarchy and Structuring Principle

Water, Hindu Mythology and an Unequal Social Order in India (D. Joshi and B. Fawcett) • Unity and Abstraction: Ethics and Modernity in the Riverine Technology of the American New Deal (B. Black) • An Evolutionary History of Water Rights in South Africa (D. D. Tewari)

Part IV: The Flow of Water

Early Developments in Groundwater Research in The Netherlands: A Societally Driven Science (J. J. de Vries) • River Works in Famine Ireland (J. C. I. Dooge)

Part V: Water as Text and Meaning

Rivers as Text: From Pre-Modern to Post-Modern Understandings of Development, Technology and the Environment in Canada and Abroad (J. L. Manore) • Constructing a Myth of Purity: The Marketing of Welsh Water (O. Roberts) • ‘Seeing is Believing’: Perceptions of Safe Water in Rural Yoruba (E.-M. Rinne)

Part VI: Water in Literature and Art

‘Of Frogs’ Eyes and Cows’ Drinking Water’: Water and Folklore in Western Kenya (V.I. Khasandi-Telewa) • ‘The Waterside Dwellers Sleep Thirsting’: Cultural Interpretations of Water in a Rural Community (F. K. Lukalo) • The Pastoral, the Monumental and What Lies In-Between: Images of Dams and the Riparian Landscape (D. C. Jackson) • Water Images in Latin American Cinema: The Films of Fernando Solanas (J. Askeland and Á. Ramírez)

Part VII: Water in Religion and Mythology

A Christian Perspective on Water and Water Rights (A. Armstrong and M. Armstrong) • River Cult and Water Management Practices in Ancient India (Joisea Joseph Kodiyanplakkal)

Part VIII: Rainmaking and Life-giving Waters

Science in the Social Sphere: Weather Modification and Public Response (S. Matthewman) • River and Rain: Life-giving Waters in Nepalese Death Rituals (T. Oestigaard) • ‘The Wealth of These Nations’: Rain, Rulers and Religion on the Cuvelai Floodplain (M. McKittrick) • The Lozi Flood Tradition (C. M. Namafe)
• Contributors • Index

About the Editors:

T. Tvedt is Research Director in the Faculty of Social Science, University of Bergen and a Panel Member of UNESCO’s World Water Assessment Program.

T. Oestigaard is Research Fellow at Center for Development Studies, University of Bergen, Norway.

VOLUME IV: Ideas of Water from Ancient Societies the Modern World

Editors: T. Tvedt & T. Oestigaard

Description

How has water been perceived in different societies and across different eras of world history? How have these changing conceptions informed and influenced our ideas about society and ourselves? In “The Idea of Water” leading international scholars explore the rich record of our ideas, from the beliefs of early societies to the latest scientific views on the nature of this unique substance. Ranging across all aspects - scientific, cultural and religious - this important work both challenges conventional interpretations and understanding of water in nature and represents one of the first attempts to provide a history of our changing conceptions of the role and significance of water in human society.

Contents
A History of the Ideas of Water: Deconstructing Nature and Constructing Society (Terje Tvedt and Terje Oestigaard)

PART I FROM THE BIG BANG TO THE HYDROLOGICAL CYCLE

Water and Cosmos: From the Big Bang to the Creation of Water and Earth (Robert Kandel) • Water in Science and Scientific Discovery (Philip Ball) • Water and the Development of the Concept of Chemical Substance (Paul Needham) • Water, its Flux, its Cycle and its Power: The Romantic Turning Point in the History of the Water Idea (Rodney Farnsworth)

PART II IDEAS OF SOCIAL USES OF WATER

The Aqueduct as Hegemonic Architecture: A Case from the Roman Republic (Rina Faletti) • Social Uses of Water in the Ancient Mediterranean: Public Baths (Garrett G. Fagan) • The Rule of Water: Uncertainty and the Cultural Ecology of Water in South India (David Mosse) • Water and Sanitation Services in History: Motivations, Expectations and Experiences (Petri S. Juuti, Henry Nygård and Tapio S. Katko) • Cultural Ideas of Water and Swimming in Modern Europe (Susan C. Anderson)

PART III FROM JUDAISM AND ISLAM TO THE MAYAN WATER COSMOLOGY

Bathing in Divine Waters: Water and Purity in Judaism and Islam (Francesca de Châtel) • Purification, Purgation and Penalty: Christian Concepts of Water and Fire in Heaven and Hell (Terje Oestigaard) • How Water Transcends Religions and Epochs: Hydrolatry in Early European Religions and Christian Syncretism (Dieter Gerten) • Water in Aboriginal Australia (Veronica Strang) • Rain, Snakes and Sex – Making Rain: Rock Art and Rain-making in Africa and America (Tore Sætersdal) • Shaping Beliefs, Identities and Institutions: The Role of Water Myths among Ethnic Groups in Yunnan, China (Zheng Xiao Yun) • Flood Myths (Wendy Doniger) • Water in the Cosmovision and Symbolism of Mesoamerica and Peru in the Pre-Hispanic Period (José Luis Martínez Ruiz, Daniel Murillo Licea and Jorge Martínez Ruiz)
 • Contributors

About the Editors:

T. Tvedt is Research Director in the Faculty of Social Science, University of Bergen and a Panel Member of UNESCO’s World Water Assessment Program.

T. Oestigaard is Research Fellow at Center for Development Studies,University of Bergen,Norway.

VOLUME V: Rivers and Society: From Early Civilizations to Modern Times

Editors: T. Tvedt & R. Coopey

Description

Rivers and Society explores the ways in which humanlriver relations have shaped important historical transformation processes. With examples ranging from explorations of classical agrarian civilizations such as the Indus, Angkor and Maya, to analyses of the role of water in the modernization process of countries such as Spain, Britain and Japan, the international contributors shed new light on the ways in which the key relationship between humans and water has given rise to new forms of social organization, new technologies and economic activities.

Contents

PART I WATER SYSTEMS AND DEVELOPMENT

 A ‘Water Systems’ Perspective on History (Terje Tvedt and Richard Coopey)

PART II WATER SYSTEMS AND AGRICULTURAL CIVILIZATIONS

The Indus Civilization and Riverine History in North-Western India and Pakistan (Gregory L. Possehl) • The Development of the River Nile and the Egyptian Civilization: A Water Historical Perspective with Focus on the First Intermediate Period (Judith Bunbury) • Osiris and the Egyptian Civilisation of Inundation: The Pyramids, the Pharaohs and their Water World (Terje Oestigaard) • The Maya Collapse: Water, Drought and Volcanoes (Richardson B. Gill) • The Mekong River System and the End of the Angkor Civilization: A Water Historical Perspective (Dan Penny) • The Historical Evolution and Anthropogenic Influences on the Yellow River from Ancient to Modern Times (Qiang Zhang, Chong-Yu Xu, Tao Yang and Zhen-Chun Hao) • Elemental Resources and Aquatic Ecosystems: Medieval Europeans and their Rivers (Richard C. Hoffmann) • Nile River Flows and Political Order in Ottoman Egypt (Fred H. Lawson) • Lesser Man-Made Rivers: The Aflaj of Oman and Traditional Timing of Water Shares (Harriet Nash)

PART III WATER SYSTEMS AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE EARLY MODERN ERA
 
 Water Control in the Netherlands with a Focus on the Period 1750–1900 (Jacobus de Vries) • Changing Societies produce Changing Rivers: Managing the Rhine in Germany and Holland in a Changing Environment, 1770–1850 (Toon Bosch) • Changing River Regimes on the Kanto Plain, Japan, 1600–1900 (Roderick I. Wilson) • Water and the British Take-Over of India (Graham Chapman) • The Neva as a Metropolitan River of Russia: Environment, Economy and Culture (Alexei Kraikovsky and Julia Lajus) • A Historic Survey of the Danube Catchment: From Classical Civilization to the End of the Nineteenth Century (Miklós Domokos) • The Severn 1750–1850: Nature, Power and Rationalisation (Richard Coopey) • The History of Flowing Water Policy in Sweden: From Natural Flow to Industrialized Rivers (Eva Jakobsson) • The Hydraulic Paradigm and Production of a New Geography in Spain: Origins and Historical Evolution between the Sixteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Leandro del Moral Ituarte) • Venetian Rivers after the Fall of the Republic: French and Austrian Hydrology and the Venetian Heritage (Eighteenth–Nineteenth Century) (Salvatore Ciriacono) • Exploitation and Innovation along the Lower Mississippi, 1750–1900 (Martin Reuss)
• Contributors • Index

About the Editors:

T. Tvedt is Research Director in the Faculty of Social Science, University of Bergen and a Panel Member of UNESCO’s World Water Assessment Program.

R. Coopey is with the Department of History at the University of Aberystwyth. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Royal Society of Arts, University College, Norway.

VOLUME VI: Water, Geopolitics and the New World Order

Editors: T. Tvedt, Prof. Graham Chapman & Roar Hagen

Description

As the world’s population continues to grow apace and an increasing number of countries aspire to a twenty-first century lifestyle so the question of access to water resources becomes ever more critical. This timely volume shows how the struggle to control water is an issue of growing geopolitical importance. Drawing on a wealth of examples, and revealing how current problems are not necessarily new as often suggested, the international contributors provide a deeper theroetical analysis of the issues, enabling a clearer understanding to be obtained of how experience in one region can properly be related to that of other regions.

Contents

PART I REFLECTIONS ON COLLECTIVE ACTION, COLLECTIVE POWER AND GEOPOLITICS

Water, Geopolitics and Collective Power in the New World Order (Roar Hagen, Graham Chapman and Terje Tvedt) • You Can’t Get There from Here: Theoretic Puzzles of Collective Action (John Waterbury) • Environmental Geopolitics and Hydro-Hegemony: The Case of Palestine and Israel (Mark Zeitoun) • Water: A Source of Wars or a Pathway to Peace? An Empirical Critique of Two Dominant Schools of Thought on Water and International Politics (Terje Tvedt)

PART II WATER, POWER AND GEOPOLITICS: HISTORICAL EXAMPLES

Aquatic Warfare in Historical China (Ralph D. Sawyer) • Water in Medieval Warfare (Helen J. Nicholson) • The Peace of Westphalia and the Water Question: A Perspective for the Benefit of the Other (Pierre Beaudry) • ‘Drawn by Blind Greed’: The Historical Origins of Criticism Regarding the Destruction of the Amazon River’s Natural Resources (José Augusto Pádua) • Water and the Partitioning of Southern Africa: The British Presence on the Shire River from the s to (Dean Kampanje-Phiri)

PART III WATER, POWER AND GEOPOLITICS IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

Continental Divide: The Issue of Freshwater in Canada–USA Relations (Frank Quinn) • The Water Framework Directive: Redesigning the Map of Europe? (Duncan Liefferink, Mark Wiering and Pieter Leroy) • The Trans-boundary Rivers on the Iberian Peninsula and the Water Management Regime between Spain and Portugal (Jos G. Timmerman) • The Strategic and Political Use of Potential Climate Change in Conflict: The Case of Somalia (Peter Haldén) • The Highlands: A Shared Water Tower in a Changing Climate and Changing Asia (Jianchu Xu) • Space, Identity and Water: South Asia’s North-East and the Brahmaputra (Graham Chapman) • From Damming Rivers to Linking Waters: Is this the Beginning of the End of Supply-Side Hydrology in India? (Rohan D’Souza) • Critical Hydropolitics in the Indus Basin (Daanish Mustafa) • The Geopolitics of Water in the Middle East: Turkey as a Regional Power (Marwa Daoudy) • Shared Water and Changing Geopolitics and Power in Central Asia (Zainiddin Karaev) • Geopolitics of Groundwater (W. Todd Jarvis) • International Law and Moderations of Physical Geography: • The Nile Setting (Tadesse Kassa) • Global Institutions and Water Governance (Ruth Langridge)
• Contributors • Index

About the Editors:

T. Tvedt is Research Director in the Faculty of Social Science, University of Bergen and a Panel Member of UNESCO’s World Water Assessment Program.

Prof. Graham Chapman, formerly Fellow and Director of Studies in Geography at Downing College Cambridge, Professor of Geography at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and at Lancaster University, sometime Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla, and the Centre for Advanced Studies, Oslo. His prime area of research has been in the Geography of South Asia.

Roar Hagen is Professor in Sociology at the University of Tromstd, Norway. His focus of interest is theoretical sociology, especially theories of collective action, systems theory and functional differentiation as the principle of integration for modern societies.