Collective and Ecological "Making" in a Thai Village: A Decades-Long Water Management Project

• In Event: Cultural Making: Practices, Priorities, and Perspectives

Abstract

Objectives: We take an ecological approach to understanding making in a rural Thai village, Ban Samkha, from 2003-2020. The project involved creating tens of thousands of “check dams,” small dams which slow the flow of water in the wet season, eventually resulting in year-round water during the dry season, transforming the potential for agriculture, drinking water, and tourism. Through careful case study analysis, we ask What roles did people, tools, policies, institutions and the physical environment play in shaping the making?

Theoretical framework: A learning ecology perspective informs our interpretation of this community-level making project (Barron, 2006), attending to the diversity of participation within the village as well as the context of the village: its geological environment, neighboring villages, district and national policies, and outside institutions (Bang et al., 2016; Engestrom & Sannino, 2021).

Data and Analysis: We collected data during four research visits to Thailand from 2017-2020, resulting in 37 hours of interviews with 14 villagers and 6 village mentors/mentees, alongside 350 pages of project documentation, most notably a book by the village (Ban Samkha, 2005). We applied case study analysis which was iterative with multiple stages of member checking alongside chronological sequencing, thematic analysis, and biographical narratives (Merriam, 1988).

Results: The check dam project started in 2003 as a small effort by school-age kids concerned about a forest fire near the school. They built a few dams near the school, and slowly some mothers then fathers helped build 20 small check dams, felling trees and stuffing rocks and leaves into gaps to slow water flow down the mountain near the village. However, when the rains came, the dams blew out from the force of the water. This led to serious collective reflection and the pursuit of outside expertise and support. In a major revision of their effort and equipped with expert partners, satellite maps and a villager-led forest survey, the village identified water flows and planned for a full network of better-placed dams. They built 33 new check dams in late 2003; 487 in 2004; 523 in 2005, and eventually a system of tens of thousands. They created a fire prevention policy, negotiating with neighboring villages for prevention. It took a few years before the forest revitalized, and more years before the presence of year-round water, which enabled a transformation in agriculture for villagers.

Significance: Ban Samkha’s water management project contributes a provocative example of making that is collective, community oriented, and highly distributed over space and across people. Further, the village not only tapped into a learning ecology to complete the project, but reshaped and transformed their learning ecology through changes in the environment, changes in relationships within the village, and changes in relationships with other villages and institutions that were essential for policy (i.e., fire prevention) and infrastructure (i.e., mapped out check dams and maintenance protocols). It provides a dramatic contrast to maker projects that are short term, built in a self-contained makerspace, or individually oriented.

Authors

• Deborah Fields, Utah State University
  Presenting Author

• Luis Morales-Navarro, University of Pennsylvania
  Non-Presenting Author

• Paulo Blikstein, Teachers College, Columbia University
  Non-Presenting Author