Water, Culture and Power: Anthropological Perspectives from ‘Down Under’

Institute of Advanced Insights Study Water,Water, CultureCulture andand Power:Power: AnthropologicalAnthropological PerspectivesPerspectives fromfrom ‘Down‘Down Under’Under’ Veronica Strang Volume 3 2010 Number 14 ISSN 1756-2074 Institute of Advanced Study Insights About Insights Insights captures the ideas and work-in-progress of the Fellows of the Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University. Up to twenty distinguished and ‘fast-track’ Fellows reside at the IAS in any academic year. They are world-class scholars who come to Durham to participate in a variety of events around a core inter-disciplinary theme, which changes from year to year. Each theme inspires a new series of Insights, and these are listed in the inside back cover of each issue. These short papers take the form of thought experiments, summaries of research findings, theoretical statements, original reviews, and occasionally more fully worked treatises. 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During their stay, Fellows engage with departments and colleges, deliver public lectures and seminars, and, above all, join an international community of researchers to address the theme selected for that year. Further details of the IAS and its Fellowship programme can be found at www.durham.ac.uk/ias/fellows Copyright The design and contents of Insights are subject to copyright. Copyright and Reproduction Rights in all submitted contributions remain with the authors, as described in the Author’s Copyright Agreement. Copyright and Reproduction Rights of all other material remain with Insights. Except under the terms of Fair Dealing (UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988), the user may not modify, copy, reproduce, retransmit or otherwise distribute the site and its contents (whether text, graphics or original research concepts), without express permission in writing from the Institute. Where the above content is directly or indirectly reproduced in an academic context under the terms of Fair Dealing, this must be acknowledged with the appropriate bibliographical citation. The opinions stated in the Insights papers are those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University, or the staff and students thereof. Institute of Advanced Study Insights WATER, CULTURE AND POWER: ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES FROM ‘DOWN UNDER’ What does water mean? Through time and across cultures, water has been encoded with core themes of meaning, most particularly as the substance of social and spiritual identity, and as a source of health, wealth and agency. These meanings flow into and are shaped by diverse cultural and temporal contexts, finding expression in particular institutional arrangements, social and religious activities, and everyday economic practices. As well as shaping people’s interactions with water, these themes of meaning form deep undercurrents in conflicts over the control of water resources. This essay explores how the meanings of water are materialised in historic and contemporary ‘sacred sites.’ Drawing on ethnographic research in the UK and New Zealand, it considers an ancient well; a seventeenth-century garden; and a colonial park fountain. Such sites are an especially rich source of symbolic imagery, illustrating a reality that the control of key water places, and of water resources, is central to social, economic and political power. Observing that successive waves of invasion and appropriation have subsumed regimes of control at each site, the essay suggests that an understanding of the relationship between water, culture and power, and the ways in which this relationship is manifested, can be applied more generally, illuminating the tensions that continue to permeate the ownership, use and management of water. It concludes by considering how this approach might be applied, for example, to the diverse cultural and sub-cultural groups in Australia who are engaged in an increasingly intense contest for the control of water. The Meanings of Water1 ater issues in many countries around the world have become increasingly urgent. Finite Wfreshwater resources are running out; over-abstraction, pollution and salination have led to multiple ecological crises; and many societies depend heavily upon economic practices that are clearly unsustainable. As a result, there has been a rise in the number and intensity of conflicts over water. However, the ownership and control of water has always been contested, not only because of its essentiality to all human activities, but also because of what it means. This essay considers the meanings of water, focusing in particular on the relationship between water, culture and power. It suggests that an understanding of this relationship can illuminate contemporary conflicts over water in diverse cultural contexts. Human worlds are saturated by meaning: every object created or used has meanings encoded in it, and these influence every interaction that people have with things and with each other. In general, it is easy to see that human-made artefacts are culturally meaningful: what is less readily appreciated (because of their categorisation as ‘natural’ as opposed to ‘cultural’) is that everything within the ‘natural’2 environment is equally densely imbued with ideas and associations. Thus strenuous efforts to reframe and commodify water as a mere resource or asset have made little impact upon its deeper cross-cultural meanings (see Giblett, 1996; Strang, 2004). 2 Institute of Advanced Study Insights Figure 1: The right to water, Mexico City. The meanings of water recur in diverse cultural contexts: though each lends its own particular shape, it appears that core themes of meaning have persisted both spatially and temporally, across cultural boundaries, and for many centuries. I have suggested previously (Strang, 2005) that this is because there are two major consistencies in the equation: the common material qualities of water; and human beings’ common sensory experience and perception of these. Both of these are instrumental in the generation of meaning. Thus cross-cultural meanings can be discerned and explored in diverse ethnographic contexts. Figure 2: Irrigation in northern Queensland. 3 Institute of Advanced Study Insights Figure 3: The fluid qualities of water. Water is characterised by fluidity and movement: it is always in motion, through the landscape or via processes of transformation from one form to another, moving from liquid to solid, from steam to liquid, and back again. Water cycles through planetary and local ecosystems, and through people and other organic things. Humans experience it in a multitude of ways: they wash in it, fish in it, water their gardens, cattle or crops with it; they gaze upon it reflectively, mesmerised by its shimmering reflections. In measurable physiological ways they are lulled by its gentle trickling, entranced by the regular swash and backwash of the sea or excited by the roar of waterfalls. Immersed in water they regain the enclosure and weightlessness of the womb. Most crucially, humans are utterly reliant upon being able to ingest water continuously, which means that they are always taking in, using and dispensing an aspect of the environment which – because human bodies are 67% composed of water – is thus both internal and external to the self. In this sense water is the material substance of the self, and the substance that links the individual human body with an immediate social and material environment. It is therefore integral to social identity, embodying and physically uniting the person with a particular place and the other people in it, who also ingest, use and share that ‘common substance.’ The way in which water circulates through human beings is echoed in larger scale hydrological cycles. It is thus the medium that links human individuals,

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