The fence ‘didn’t work’: the mundane engagements and material practices of state-led development in China’s Danjiangkou Reservoir

Abstract

ABSTRACT Central China’s Danjiangkou Reservoir supplies clean water to major cities as part of the South–North Water Transfer Project (SNWTP). Fencing is presented as essential to establishing borders, controls, and authority over the water reservoir and surrounding areas that were previously settled lands. Drawing on Tania Li’s work, as well as work by geographers and anthropologists on the contested production of the state and the border through practice, we focus on the mundane engagements and material practices of a range of actors with this state-led development to illustrate how even state lines that seem natural, and are used to justify or facilitate the massive resettlement and landscape reorganization, also require ongoing construction and engagement. While fencing is presented as part of establishing pristine first class water quality, our research shows that fences have failed, been crossed and are constantly negotiated. We contend that to unravel the apparent solidity of fencing technologies, they should be understood as an interface, one that is under constant negotiation and reconfiguration and that in practice requires the work of a range of actors. In considering these engagements, we contribute to a burgeoning literature critically examining the state in China.