ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

From Streams to Basins: Knowing and Governing Water in the 20th Century

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

English Abstract

Control and contestation over water has long been wrapped up in how societies know, represent, measure, and map streams and rivers. In the twentieth century, a marked shift occurred as hydrologists, engineers, conservationists, and state agencies came to view river basins rather than individual rivers as the fundamental unit of concern. From the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire to the Tennessee Valley Authority to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to the Mekong River Commission, scientists, planners and diplomats alike framed their projects according to the boundaries of river basins small and large.

Participants in this roundtable will discuss episodes in the management of rivers and basins from sites around the world in the twentieth century, focusing on sites around the globe. How was river basin science and management made portable across arid, humid, hot, and cold climates? Across markedly different cultural and political contexts? How did the river basin come to be seen as a "natural" unit, even as basins themselves became engineered to unprecedented degrees? What types of upstream-downstream relations and responsibilities does the basin model entail? How have people challenged that model, at times actively destroying infrastructure, and how might such histories be useful in a world where waters of all sorts are imperiled by planetary climate change?

Sub Unit

• Roundtable

Chair

• Susan Lindee, University of Pennsylvania

Participants

• Lino Camprubí, University of Seville

• Alexandra Hui, University of Toulouse - Jean Jaurès

• John Kanbayashi, University of Pennsylvania

• Andreas Mentrup-Womelsdorf, University of Augsburg

• Anna Lehr Mueser, University of Pennsylvania