Moving the Rain: Settler Colonialism, the Capitalist State, and the Hydrologic Rift in California’s Central Valley

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

AbstractAgricultural development and water infrastructure constitute the central features of California’s Central Valley. Marxist ecological theory has examined the development of capitalist agriculture in the Central Valley, while decolonial scholarship has critiqued the disproportionate impact of California’s water resource management on Indigenous communities. We bring together Marxist ecology and critiques of settler colonialism through an examination of land reclamation in California, culminating in the development of the Central Valley Project (CVP) in the 1930s. Reclamation combined the twin logics of capitalism (accumulation) and settler colonialism (elimination) to produce landscapes conducive to capitalist agriculture. Faced with ecological limits to accumulation, colonial‐capitalist expansion required state intervention in the form of infrastructure projects to secure water for agricultural production. The CVP generated a rift in California’s hydrologic cycle, causing significant declines in water quality and fisheries and giving rise to forms of resistance and restoration that challenge colonial‐capitalist water development in the Central Valley. The reciprocal restoration of salmon fisheries offers a method to begin mending this hydrologic rift while disrupting ongoing settler colonial violence in California.