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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

Australia as a hydraulic society? « Previous | |Next »
October 12, 2010

One way to understand water in Australian society is to turn to Karl Wittfogel’s essay ‘The Theory of Oriental Society’ as this is where Wittfogel develops his ideas of hydraulic civilizations. According to Kirsten Henderson in 'Review Essay: Water and Culture in Australia: Some Alternative Perspectives' in Thesis Eleven August 2010:

Hydraulic civilizations are societies where the ever increasing drive to control water through the development of technology leads to an ever increasing concentration of power in the hands of an elite. Under such regimes, according to Wittfogel, these elite are usually bureaucrats. They are tasked with the job of providing the expert knowledge on hydrological conditions and devising the organizational procedures required for the mobilization of the labour needed to build dams, irrigation channels, locks and weirs for the control of water. Wittfogel was therefore disputing the orthodox Marxist idea that the ruling class within a society are necessarily those with capital and that the driving force for change in society is always the relationship between labour and capital. According to Wittfogel the ruling class of a hydraulic society are those who control the ‘hydraulic means of production’ and the driving force for change is increasing technological control of water.

In semi-arid or arid conditions it is not only the presence or absence of water that has a bearing on the development of irrigated agriculture and the subsequent social formation of a hydraulic society.

Henderson says:

Three requirements must be met: the development and building of water controlling technology, the social organization of labour to carry out the water- works, and the development of what Wittfogel calls a ‘time-keeping’ ability or, in other words, the development of a calendar (usually based on understandings of astronomy) able to predict the availability of water (p. 143).In a hydraulic society it is the state, argues Wittfogel, that is the only entity capable of meeting all three of these requirements simultaneously.The state, therefore, is directly involved in the economy. For Wittfogel this is the key to understanding hydraulic societies.

Wittfogel’s analysis, says Henderson, is a starting point for a way to think about nature and society together because Wittfogel foregrounds the role of nature in history in a manner that his contemporaries failed to take up:
In so doing he also incorporated the notion of power, particularly bureaucratic state power, into the nature-culture relationship in a form that other Marxist scholars of his time were unwilling to examine.... Wittfogel’s insights are important today because they ask the question: how in the remaking of nature do we re-make ourselves? (Worster, 1985: 30). In other words, what role do decisions taken by societies as they encounter their environment have in the formation of that society? And, more specifically, what is the role of water in that process?

These are important questions for an Australia struggling to make the Murray-Darling Basin more sustainable.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:41 PM |