Infrastructure lives : Water, territories and transformations in Turkey, Peru and Spain

This dissertation departs from questions about territorialization processes associated with modern hydraulic infrastructure. It asks about the changing visions and imaginaries that shape hydraulic infrastructure projects; about how hydraulic infrastructure is a powerful tool to materialize specific imaginaries in expected and unexpected ways; and what effects this brings about for adjacent hydrosocial territories. The central research question is: How have contested imaginaries shaped hydraulic infrastructure projects and, in consequence, (re)configured hydrosocial territories in Turkey, Peru and Spain?In order to do so, this research gives analytically deep ‘snapshots’ of diverse unfinished moments of hydraulic infrastructures, territorial transformations and associated imaginaries in Turkey, Peru and Spain. This cross-pollination between at first sight dissimilar cases provides insights about the complexities and dynamics related to infrastructure, territory, water, power and imaginaries. Furthermore, through combining the notions of hydrosocial territories, imaginaries, governmentalities and subjectivities, and drawing from the associated scholarly discussions, this research advances an innovative and comprehensive conceptual framework to scrutinize the role of infrastructure in making and remaking territories.The first case that is analysed are the contestations surrounding the Ilısu Dam in Southeastern Turkey. The analysis shows how the realization of dam (and other infrastructure) projects relies on the mobilization of different overlapping governmentalities, including subtle ‘inclusive’ strategies and cultural politics. In response, actor coalitions strategically and dynamically mobilize networks, scales and different dam dimensions to contest the construction plans. Eventually, dominant imaginaries materialize in dam and resettlement designs, whereas ‘un-materialized’ imaginaries (in this case of the dam opposition) importantly challenge technical and apolitical discourses, claiming recognition for local culture, history and suffering.The second case dissects the water infrastructure complex providing water to Peru’s capital city Lima and producing hydropower. The analysis demonstrates how imaginaries about the domination and ‘development’ of water and people through hydraulic engineering are central in modern infrastructure projects, which in turn transform hydrosocial territories physically, socially, legal-politically and symbolically in profound and lasting ways. The historic analysis also reveals how territories and infrastructural materialities are not fixed, but continuously reconfigured through changing objectives and actor alliances, as well as through contestations and a re-remembering of the past.The last case that is analysed are discussions about dam removal in Spain. It is demonstrated how dam removal originates from ageing materials and imaginaries, and upcoming new ideologies about nature-society relations. This points to the fact that what a dam (and other hydraulic infrastructures) was, is and can be changes with time and is imagined differently by different actors. This in turn gives rise to contestations both of infrastructure construction and infrastructure removal. The analysis exemplifies that studying different momentums in an infrastructure’s life, including removal, sheds light on co-existing infrastructural stability and dynamism.In terms of directions for future engagements in the field of water governance, this dissertation shows that infrastructure projects need to be re-politicized and made subject of public discussions and decision-making. The diversity of actors, opinions, ontologies, epistemologies and hydrosocial practices should be acknowledged and in practice incorporated to encourage diversity rather than standardization, moving away from blue-print ideas and allowing for dissensus.To conclude, this research argues that infrastructure lives constantly develop because of shifting material, environmental, political and social relations in different momentums. Hydraulic infrastructures as plans, processes and materializations, as socio-technical nodes and mediators in constantly developing human/nonhuman relations, reflect and co-constitute our socionatural living together, our infrastructure lives. Hydraulic infrastructures are therefore not inanimate objects but living and acting as the materialization of socio-political relations and debates about the what and who of our living together. This, in consequence, means that studying hydraulic infrastructure provides a fascinating lens to dissect and understand the questions, struggles and enactments of debates about nature, society and the entwinement of both. With re-naturalisation and dam removal on the rise, some infrastructure’s lives might have already come to an end. But others will continue in the future – either in present forms or reincarnated in new designs, new discourses, new environments, new imaginaries, new relations.

Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Hommes, Lena
Other Authors:	Boelens, R.A.
Format:	Doctoral thesis biblioteca
Language:	English
Published:	Wageningen University
Subjects:	Cum laude,
Online Access:	https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/infrastructure-lives-water-territories-and-transformations-in-tur
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