Evenden, Matthew D. Fish Versus Power: An Environmental History of the Fraser River. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Book Summary: Amid contemporary debates over large dam development and declines in fisheries, this book offers a case study of a river basin where development decisions did not ultimately dam the river, but rather conserved its…
Wiebe E. Bijker (2007) “American and Dutch Coastal Engineering: Differences in RiskConception and Differences in Technological Culture,” Social Studies of Science, 37:143–152. “How is it possible that the USA failed to keep New Orleans dry, when large parts of the Netherlands can exist below sea level? This question, with all its implicit rhetoric about the…
Carroll-Burke, Patrick. “Material Designs: Engineering Cultures and Engineering States – Ireland 1650-1900” Theory and Society, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Feb., 2002), pp. 75-114 “In particular, I seek to elaborate a theoretical concept of “engineering cultures,” and through that “engineering states,” by employing a triangulated analysis of ideas (discursive and institutionalized), practices (embodied, temporalized, and organized),…
Dikes and Dams, Thick with PoliticsAuthor(s): Wiebe E. BijkerSource: Isis, Vol. 98, No. 1 (March 2007), pp. 109-123 ABSTRACT: Things are thick with politics. This essay illustrates the point by focusing on a variety of technologies that help to manage water: anicuts and tanks in India, dikes and a storm surge barrier in the Netherlands,…
Macauley, David (2005) “The Domestication of Water: Filtering Nature Through Technology,” Essays in Philosophy: Vol. 6: Iss. 1, Article 23. This paper examines some of the key ways in which water is mediated by technology and human artifacts. I show how the modes in which we conceive and experience this vital fluid are affected deeply…
MICHELLE KOOY and KAREN BAKKER, “Technologies of Government: Constituting Subjectivities, Spaces, and Infrastructures in Colonial and Contemporary Jakarta” Volume 32.2 June 2008 375–91 International Journal of Urban and Regional Research DOI:10.1111/j.1468-2427.2008.00791.x Abstract This article seeks to extend recent debates on urban infrastructure access by exploring the interrelationship between subjectivity, urban space and infrastructure. Specifically, it…
Espeland, “Bureaucrats and Indians in a Contemporary Colonial Encounter”Law & Social Inquiry. 03/2001; 26(2):403 – 433. DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-4469.2001.tb00183.x ABSTRACT: This article investigates the effects of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 ,in structuring an encounter over a decision about building a dam in central Arizona. From the vantage point of three groups with deep…
Bijker, Wiebe E. “The Oosterschelde Storm Surge Barrier: A Test Case for Dutch Water Technology, Management, and Politics” TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE · JULY 2002 DOI: 10.1353/tech.2002.0104 Article available here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25147960?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Linton, Jamie. “Modern water and its discontents: a history of hydrosocial renewal” WIREs Water 2014, 1:111–120. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1009 ABSTRACT: Water planning and management in the 20th century were characterized by a particular way of understanding and relating to water that may be described in terms of ‘modern water’. Essentially, modern water is a way of…
Molle, F.; Mollinga, P.P. and Wester, P. 2009. Hydraulic bureaucracies and the hydraulic mission: Flows of water, flows of power. Water Alternatives 2(3): 328‐349 ABSTRACT: Anchored in 19th century scientism and an ideology of the domination of nature, inspired by colonial hydraulic feats, and fuelled by technological improvements in high dam constructions and power generation…