Où vivre sans boire revisited: Water and political‐economic change among Mikea hunter‐gatherers of southwestern Madagascar

Abstract

In this article, I present a political‐ecological history of the Mikea Forest of southwestern Madagascar, and of the Mikea people, anchored in four water‐themed moments: 1966, with the publication of one of the first ethnographic descriptions of Mikea, Où vivre sans boire, “where they live without drinking”; 1998, when Mikea combined foraging with swidden maize agriculture and traveled long distances to get their water; 2003, when a Joint Commission of organizations, working to halt deforestation, considered plans for canals to irrigate potential farmland; and 2018, when Mikea living on the edge of a new national park desperately waited for rain. I offer “hydrosocial moments” as a way to extend Boelens and colleagues' “hydrosocial territories” through time. Water facts and truths change through a dialectical process of truth assertion and contradiction. In the Mikea case, one changing truth was who Mikea are: exotic desert hunter‐gatherers, victimized indigenous peoples losing forest to rapacious farmers, or poor people in need of development. Interveners borrowed truths from neighboring hydrosocial territories. The concepts of hydrosocial territories and moments are significant because they have real effects, in this case, poverty.