Modern and nonmodern waters: Sociotechnical controversies, successful anti-dam movements and water ontologies Silvia Flaminio To cite this version: Silvia Flaminio. Modern and nonmodern waters: Sociotechnical controversies, successful anti-dam movements and water ontologies. Water alternatives, Water Alternatives Association (Montpellier), 2021. halshs-03135140 HAL Id: halshs-03135140 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-03135140 Submitted on 8 Feb 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. www.water-alternatives.org Volume 14 | Issue 1 Flaminio, S. 2021. Modern and nonmodern waters: Sociotechnical controversies, successful anti-dam movements and water ontologies. Water Alternatives 14(1): 204-227 Modern and Nonmodern Waters: Sociotechnical Controversies, Successful Anti-Dam Movements and Water Ontologies Silvia Flaminio University of Lausanne, Faculty of Geosciences and Environment, Institute of Geography and Sustainability, Lausanne, Switzerland; and University of Lyon, UMR 5600 EVS, Lyon, France;
[email protected] ABSTRACT: Many new dam projects are presently being put forward, revealing both the comeback of large hydraulic infrastructure and the resilience of the modern ontology of water. To contribute to the understanding of modern water’s perpetuation, this paper takes a step back in time and looks at the cases of two dam projects which were cancelled during the 1980s due to environmental protests: the Loyettes Dam on the Rhône River in France and the Gordon-below-Franklin Dam on the Gordon River in Tasmania, Australia.