Abstract
In this paper we draw attention to the important role technology plays in co-mediating institutions, opening up some courses of action and closing off others. Irrigation studies generally recognize the importance of institutions in making technologies work, but tend to take the precise functioning of institutions for granted. Studies that analyse institutions often do not pay enough attention to the mediating role of technology in allocating benefits, risks and burdens. We show in this paper that (irrigation) institutions are moulded by and come about through the interactions between the technical and the social in dynamic and often contested processes of adaptation to changing environments. We argue that a critical understanding of what institutions do requires more explicit and detailed attention to technologies. We base this argument on a detailed historical analysis of the functioning of Seguia Khrichfa, a farmer managed irrigation scheme in Morocco. Through time, irrigation institutions in the Seguia Khrichfa have undergone transformations to match the changing demands of a heterogeneous and growing group of irrigators, an increased command area and changing cropping patterns, and the introduction of new technologies such as drip irrigation. These institutional transformations consisted of recursive cycles of modifications in technological infrastructure and the rules of allocation and distribution. Technical adaptations prompt alterations in the water rotation schedule and vice versa. We anchor our case in descriptions of a specific technology that played a crucial role in co-steering institutional change: the introduction of open/closed gates. Our analysis of the co-evolution of society and technology in shaping institutions in the Seguia Khrichfa shows how technologies become enrolled in (sometimes implicit) processes of re-negotiating relations of authority and responsibility while obscuring institutional politics.
Highlights
The first impression one gets when visiting the Seguia Khrichfa irrigation system in Northwest Morocco is that it is a place of tranquillity, tradition and harmony
We show that the Seguia Khrichfa is not as stable and harmonious as it may seem at first sight
The Seguia Khrichfa is a secondary canal of the Ain Bittit irrigation system, located in the Saiss region (Northwest Morocco)
Summary
The first impression one gets when visiting the Seguia Khrichfa irrigation system in Northwest Morocco is that it is a place of tranquillity, tradition and harmony. The mutual shaping of institutions by irrigation technology and society to a different and more modern agricultural era, one centred on profit-making individuals competing with each other rather than on collaborating farmers who enter into mutual agreements to share available resources among themselves Both farmers and engineers referred to the introduction of drip irrigation as yet another manifestation of the modernity and success of the Seguia Khrichfa. Rather than a radical break with unchanging traditions, the contemporary changes in Seguia Khrichfa around the introduction of drip irrigation form part of a long historical sequence of sociotechnical modifications These new technologies were mixed and blended in flexible and seemingly easy ways with old canals and water sharing practices in response to changing conditions. We finish with further reflections on how to understand the material of the social in critical institutional analyses: how to capture the role of (changing) technologies in justifying, modifying or ‘fixing’ relations of authority and responsibility in natural resources management?
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