World Development 146 (2021) 105615 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect World Development journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev Water and power, water’s power: State-making and socionature shaping volatile rivers and riverine people in Mexico Anja Nygren Global Development Studies Box 18, FI-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland article info abstract Article history: Water-related disasters have become more unpredictable amidst human-induced climatic and hydroeco- Accepted 23 June 2021 logical changes, with profound effects on people inhabiting fragile river basins. In this article, I analyse Available online 7 July 2021 drastic waterscape transformations and people’s differentiated exposure to water-related vulnerabilities in the Grijalva River lower basin, southeastern Mexico, focusing on how state authority is reinforced Keywords: through waterscape alterations and how altered waterscapes shape state-making and scalar politics. governance Examining interlinkages between 1) state-making and governance; 2) resource-making and politics of Mexico scale; and 3) hazard-making and the dynamics of socionature, the article contributes to scholarly and political ecology development practice discussions on environmental vulnerability. I argue that the goals of consolidating state vulnerability state power and promoting development through massive waterscape changes and resource extractions water have provoked hazards that are difficult to control, resulting in differentiated distribution of environmen- tal benefits and burdens. Drawing on archival research, documentary analysis, thematic interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork, the study illustrates the overlapping and cumulative effects of state-making, pol- itics of scale, and the dynamics of socionature on socially differentiated vulnerability. Although the forms of governance shift over time, statecraft as a mode of consolidating state authority and controlling lower- basin environments and residents persists. The government prevents social mobilisation through political persuasion and pressure, and disciplines residents to adapt to altered waterscapes, while allowing few changes in prevalent power structures. Simultaneously, the study demonstrates that water cannot be controlled by political rules and requisites, while local residents reinterpret dominant ways of governing through claim-making, negotiation, everyday resistance, and situational improvisation, albeit within unequal power relations. The study enhances understanding of water-related vulnerabilities resulting from recurrent, yet temporally remoulded agendas of state-making combined with socially differentiat- ing politics of scaling and the dynamics of socionature, which altogether reformulate human-nonhuman interactions and make local smallholders and peri-urban poor increasingly vulnerable to floods. Ó 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 1. Introduction shape state-making and scalar politics tied to resource-making. By resource-making, I refer to activities that convert once uneconomic Water-related disasters have become more intensive amidst reserves into valuable ‘‘resources” and bring them into (global) human-induced climate change and hydroecological alterations, commodity networks, at the cost of huge modifications to local with profound effects on people inhabiting fragile river basins. landscapes, livelihoods, and human-nonhuman relationships Many people, especially in the global South, are exposed to (Bridge, 2010; Kröger and Nygren, 2020).1 increased flood hazards as natural forces become manifest in a Mexican governments have been implementing massive pro- more unpredictable manner (IPCC, 2018). In this article, I analyse jects of hydropower, irrigated agriculture and cattle raising, hydro- drastic waterscape changes and people’s socially differentiated carbon extraction, flood-protection infrastructure, and human exposure to water-related vulnerabilities in the Grijalva River lower basin, Tabasco, southeastern Mexico. The study focuses on 1 how state authority and resource-making are reinforced through Waterscape refers here to the hybrid character of a water landscape (Swyngedouw, 1999: 443). It indicates a co-produced socionatural entity, in which waterscape alterations and how, in their turn, altered waterscapes power is embedded in, and shaped by water’s material flows and symbolic meanings (Budds & Hinojosa, 2012: 124). Vulnerability refers to people’s inability to withstand adverse effects from multiple stressors, including everyday uncertainties and E-mail address: anja.nygren@helsinki.fi catastrophic events (Füssel, 2007; Nygren, 2016). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2021.105615 0305-750X/Ó 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). A. Nygren World Development 146 (2021) 105615 relocation in the Grijalva River basin for decades, while urging peo- Closely linked to agendas of state-making are the politics of ple to adapt to associated changes. Simultaneously, many hazards scale associated with resource-making. Although political–ecolog- related to environmental engineering and resource-making have ical studies have criticised frameworks that take spatial scales as been ignored, as have the processes of vulnerabilisation they have given, careful analyses of how scalar politics shape the production provoked in local communities. A better understanding of how of particular waterscapes are scarce (Budds & Hinojosa, 2012; waterscape changes affect local lives and livelihoods requires con- Norman et al., 2012). Here, I analyse scalar politics through ideas sideration of how hydropower dams, floodplain irrigation, oil and of networked scales and scaled networks that enable examination natural-gas extraction, and natural and human-induced river- of how power relations and environmental alterations relate across course modifications alter resource access and make people differ- scales, as dams are built, flood-protection levees are raised, irriga- entially vulnerable to floods. Recently, the 480-km-long Grijalva tion channels are dug, and oil wells are drilled for extensive has been classified the eighteenth riskiest deltaic river in the resource extraction. world, based on its tendency to provoke devastating floods To understand water-related vulnerabilities in the Grijalva (Tessler et al., 2015). lower basin, it is important to also consider the dynamics of I argue that by examining linkages between 1) state-making socionature whereby the natural and the social, and the hydrolog- and governance; 2) resource-making and politics of scale; and 3) ical and the political (re)make each other (Linton & Budds, 2014; hazard-making and the dynamics of socionature, a detailed under- Nygren & Rikoon, 2008). This draws attention to political processes standing can be gained of how state authority and resource- through which diverse actors modify ‘‘nature” and frames hydro- making are consolidated through waterscape alterations, and logical forces as dynamic and somewhat unpredictable elements how altered socionatural dynamics render particular people of environmental change (Boelens et al, 2016; Swyngedouw, increasingly vulnerable to floods. Socionature refers here to the 2009, 2015). entanglement of the social and natural, and the ecological and In the next section, I present theoretical ideas that assist in political in environmental change (Goh, 2019; Linton & Budds, studying the interplay of state-making, scalar politics, and the 2014; Peluso, 2012). dynamics of socionature in waterscape alterations, while the third The role of the state in environmental governance has received section explains the context and the methods of the study. The four increased interest in recent scholarly and development practice and the fifth examine state-making and scalar politics in recurrent discussions (Bridge, 2014; Harris, 2012; Meehan & Molden, alterations of Grijalvan waterscapes and their linkages to socially 2015; Robertson, 2015). Yet relatively scant attention has been differentiated vulnerabilities, while the sixth analyses how domi- paid to the interplay of state-making, politics of scale, and the nant forms of state-making are challenged by water’s power and socionatural dynamics in the production of vulnerability, as by residents’ efforts to reconfigure their positions vis-à-vis state- remarked by scholars interested in state authority and environ- making and resource politics. The conclusion section highlights mental justice (Boelens et al, 2016; Nygren, 2016; Perreault, how state-making and scalar politics consolidate state authority 2014). Even less is known of their overlapping and cumulative and advance resource extraction at the cost of residents’ socially effects on the lives and livelihoods of people inhabiting volatile differentiated exposure to water-related hazards, making local environments (Käkönen & Thuon, 2019). My study tackles this smallholders and peri-urban poor increasingly vulnerable to floods. problem by examining how state-making, politics of scale, and the dynamics of socionature co-produce environmental vulnerability. 2. State-making, scalar politics, and the dynamics of Residents of the Grijalva lower basin have lived for centuries socionature with an abundance of water and the probability of temporary floods under deltaic riverine conditions, with blurred divides Recent