ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Engineering Frontiers: Water, Expertise, and the Social Costs of Hydraulic Modernization

Session Submission Type: Organized Session

English Abstract

This session examines the forced and negotiated resettlement of villages and valley communities caused by dam construction in Europe between 1919 and 1990. During the age of high modernism, hydroelectric expansion promised national progress but entailed the submergence of inhabited landscapes. In transnationally connected yet politically diverse “hydraulic states” such as Switzerland, Italy, Spain, and France, engineers, planners, and corporate or state actors developed shared technical languages and negotiation strategies that crossed political borders even as their regimes diverged—republican, authoritarian, or socialist.
Our session applies the lens of development-induced displacement to analyse how experts from hydrology, civil engineering, law, and social science orchestrated these resettlements; how energy institutions integrated the relocation of valley populations into their planning and bargaining; and how local communities responded with resistance, adaptation, or reluctant cooperation. The comparative approach highlights the different ways in which loss can be experienced, whether imposed directly or slowly and gradually, and reveals the moral and political boundaries of technocratic authority when it comes to transforming mountain and rural landscapes.
The four papers bring these dynamics into focus. One explores the displacement and resettlement, as well as the resistance and negotiation, by local communities affected by dams in Spain at different times during 20th century. Another analyses republican Italy, with a case study of a dam built by an Italian company in South Tyrol, a German-speaking area with different national identities. A third investigates federal Switzerland, with its fragmented legal situation, where reservoirs and compensation were negotiated and determined according to each canton. A final paper turns to differentiated mobilization of scientific knowledge in the analysis of the impact of dams in France, between the 1930s and the 1970s.

Sub Unit

• Organized Session

Chair

• Francesco D'Amaro, Autonomous University of Madrid

Individual Presentations

• Dams, displacement and resettlement. The experience of local communities through non-academic sources - Judit Gil-Farrero, Università degli studi di Bergamo (UniBg)

• Calculating Loss: Expert Knowledge, Cultural Value, and the Politics of Resettlement in Swiss Hydropower Projects - Sebastian De Pretto, University of Berne

• The Reschensee Dam (Bozen, South Tyrol, Italy) from displacement and national contrast to touristic attraction - Stefano Morosini, Università degli studi di Bergamo

• French Dams: power, power, knowledge, science and knowledge - Anne Dalmasso, Université Grenoble Alpes, LARHRA

Session Organizers

• Judit Gil-Farrero, Università degli studi di Bergamo (UniBg)

• Sebastian De Pretto, University of Berne