Abstract
Academic scholarship in the social sciences has, in recent years, documented how water management infrastructure connects and disconnects people and flows, portraying and defining inequalities. The present work contributes to advancing this perspective by undertaking a case study to comparatively examine two irrigation-based water infrastructure systems in Sri Lanka: the tank cascade system and the surface irrigation system. The analysis demonstrates that differences in the layout of the water infrastructure directly contribute to the ways in which downstream communities are socially, economically and politically configured. Specifically, the arrangement of water infrastructure influences the degree of water users’ dependence on each other, the degree of social stratification between head-end and tail-end farmers, and the degree to which water is regarded as an ‘economic’ object. It can be concluded that the technical system of water infrastructure is inextricably bound to society and should, therefore, be considered a socio-material assemblage. Thus, it is important that policy decisions on water infrastructure management treat the structuring of infrastructure as experimental and potentially reversible.
Highlights
In recent years, academic scholarship in the social sciences has increasingly focused on analyzing how water management infrastructure connects and disconnects people and flows, portraying and defining inequalities entrenched in societies [1,2,3,4]
Kanna meeting in which decisions seasonal cultivation are made. The collection of such primary data was supplemented by detailed regarding seasonal cultivation are made. The collection of such primary data was supplemented by maps of the water infrastructure in the tank cascade system, documents detailed maps of the water infrastructure in the tank cascade system, describing land-use patterns and land tenure systems, and a comprehensive layout of cultivated land documents describing land-use patterns and land tenure systems, and a comprehensive layout of plots, which were from theobtained resident offices of the International
The present work seeks to offer a modest contribution to the literature on water management, water infrastructure and water governance by drawing from a case study conducted in Sri Lanka to comparatively examine two different water management infrastructures utilized for irrigated cultivation and analyze the social, economic and political configurations and effects that arise from them
Summary
Academic scholarship in the social sciences has increasingly focused on analyzing how water management infrastructure connects and disconnects people and flows, portraying and defining inequalities entrenched in societies [1,2,3,4]. Much of the contemporary literature on water use, governance and management is framed around the concept of “water worlds” and recognizes that water and its management is inextricably bound to a variety of social processes. This was not always the case, as during much of the colonial period, water was perceived as an infinite resource that had to be effectively distributed across populations using massive technical structures (dams, canals etc.) governed by hydraulic principles [5,6]. This initiative led to a new paradigm in the literature on water management infrastructure, with a shift in emphasis to private actors, market solutions and public-private-partnerships (PPPs) [8]
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