Christopher Sneddon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226284316
- eISBN:
- 9780226284453
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226284453.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
The construction of tens of thousands of large dams across the planet’s surface brought about one of the largest biophysical transformations of the twentieth century and has irrevocably altered ...
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The construction of tens of thousands of large dams across the planet’s surface brought about one of the largest biophysical transformations of the twentieth century and has irrevocably altered human-environment relations. The geopolitical dimensions of this “concrete revolution” have remained largely hidden. The history of large dams and more generally river basin development is simultaneously environmental, social, technical and geopolitical. This book focuses on the activities of the United States government, in particular the Bureau of Reclamation, America’s premier water development agency, to exercise and disseminate technical expertise regarding large hydroelectric dams and river basin planning and development to the world’s “underdeveloped regions” from the 1930s to the 1970s. The Bureau’s water resource development activities, which ranged from short-term consultations to intensive multi-year programs, were deeply influenced by the imperatives of US foreign policy during the Cold War era. Detailed cases presented in the book—including Bureau interventions in China, Lebanon, Ethiopia and the Mekong Basin—underscore how the geopolitical dynamics of the Cold War facilitated an alignment of economic and technical networks of development that were highly favorable to the dissemination of large dams. Large dams and other technology-centered development projects are never purely technical undertakings whose successes or failures hinge on the ingenuity of the engineers who design and build them or the motivations of state officials who fund and promote them. The lessons of the history presented here are that large dams and river basin planning are complex hybrids of nature, technology and society.Less
The construction of tens of thousands of large dams across the planet’s surface brought about one of the largest biophysical transformations of the twentieth century and has irrevocably altered human-environment relations. The geopolitical dimensions of this “concrete revolution” have remained largely hidden. The history of large dams and more generally river basin development is simultaneously environmental, social, technical and geopolitical. This book focuses on the activities of the United States government, in particular the Bureau of Reclamation, America’s premier water development agency, to exercise and disseminate technical expertise regarding large hydroelectric dams and river basin planning and development to the world’s “underdeveloped regions” from the 1930s to the 1970s. The Bureau’s water resource development activities, which ranged from short-term consultations to intensive multi-year programs, were deeply influenced by the imperatives of US foreign policy during the Cold War era. Detailed cases presented in the book—including Bureau interventions in China, Lebanon, Ethiopia and the Mekong Basin—underscore how the geopolitical dynamics of the Cold War facilitated an alignment of economic and technical networks of development that were highly favorable to the dissemination of large dams. Large dams and other technology-centered development projects are never purely technical undertakings whose successes or failures hinge on the ingenuity of the engineers who design and build them or the motivations of state officials who fund and promote them. The lessons of the history presented here are that large dams and river basin planning are complex hybrids of nature, technology and society.
Christopher Sneddon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226284316
- eISBN:
- 9780226284453
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226284453.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
The third chapter describes the period when the US State Department increasingly conceived dams and river basin development as vehicles of technical assistance that, if used strategically, would ...
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The third chapter describes the period when the US State Department increasingly conceived dams and river basin development as vehicles of technical assistance that, if used strategically, would demonstrate to current and would-be allies in the underdeveloped regions of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America the superiority of American developmental and political approaches vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. An important dimension of the Bureau’s institutionalization within the sphere of foreign policy concerned debates over how economic and technical assistance might enhance the capacity of American business interests to increase their global influence and investment opportunities. The central case study of this chapter is the Litani Project in Lebanon. Initiated in 1951, the Litani program was the Bureau’s first intensive foray into overseas technical assistance. The Bureau’s experiences in the Litani basin established an administrative and technological model of river basin planning that subsequent initiatives would follow, but also reflect the numerous organizational and environmental difficulties that harried nearly every major Bureau investigation in the tricontinental world. A key outcome of the Litani and similar Bureau initiatives was the creation of the “modern” river basin, which combined resource development through dam construction with more ambitious schemes of social engineering.Less
The third chapter describes the period when the US State Department increasingly conceived dams and river basin development as vehicles of technical assistance that, if used strategically, would demonstrate to current and would-be allies in the underdeveloped regions of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America the superiority of American developmental and political approaches vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. An important dimension of the Bureau’s institutionalization within the sphere of foreign policy concerned debates over how economic and technical assistance might enhance the capacity of American business interests to increase their global influence and investment opportunities. The central case study of this chapter is the Litani Project in Lebanon. Initiated in 1951, the Litani program was the Bureau’s first intensive foray into overseas technical assistance. The Bureau’s experiences in the Litani basin established an administrative and technological model of river basin planning that subsequent initiatives would follow, but also reflect the numerous organizational and environmental difficulties that harried nearly every major Bureau investigation in the tricontinental world. A key outcome of the Litani and similar Bureau initiatives was the creation of the “modern” river basin, which combined resource development through dam construction with more ambitious schemes of social engineering.
Viviana d’Auria
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719096525
- eISBN:
- 9781526104335
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096525.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, Imperialism and Colonialism
With a focus on ‘practised architecture’, this chapter contests the understanding of physical things as mere mirrors of social norms and economic interests, stretching the analysis of decolonisation ...
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With a focus on ‘practised architecture’, this chapter contests the understanding of physical things as mere mirrors of social norms and economic interests, stretching the analysis of decolonisation beyond political and economic narratives. The Volta River Project, a river basin development scheme conceived in late colonial Africa and vigorously re-cast as a postcolonial symbol, offers ideal terrain to expose conflicting ideas of decolonisation as they were enacted during and after Ghana’s lengthy ‘transitional’ phase. It presents the work of different architectural practices involved in the design of new industrial towns and resettlement villages, exposing their conflicting ideas about the temporalities and spatialities of decolonisation. Their overlap presents decolonisation’s increasingly transcultural and transnational nature, as it became more than a unilateral relationship between empire and colony. As former colonial influences began to fade away, architects re-imagined urban models, using the occasion to invest design with ideals of liberation, but also remained tied to evolutionary biases. Attempts at decolonising Ghana’s built and cultural environment also illustrate the tension between market-oriented self-help housing and the extension of government-led developmentalism, a tension which illustrates decolonisation’s major paradoxes, caught between nation-building and (critical) internationalism.Less
With a focus on ‘practised architecture’, this chapter contests the understanding of physical things as mere mirrors of social norms and economic interests, stretching the analysis of decolonisation beyond political and economic narratives. The Volta River Project, a river basin development scheme conceived in late colonial Africa and vigorously re-cast as a postcolonial symbol, offers ideal terrain to expose conflicting ideas of decolonisation as they were enacted during and after Ghana’s lengthy ‘transitional’ phase. It presents the work of different architectural practices involved in the design of new industrial towns and resettlement villages, exposing their conflicting ideas about the temporalities and spatialities of decolonisation. Their overlap presents decolonisation’s increasingly transcultural and transnational nature, as it became more than a unilateral relationship between empire and colony. As former colonial influences began to fade away, architects re-imagined urban models, using the occasion to invest design with ideals of liberation, but also remained tied to evolutionary biases. Attempts at decolonising Ghana’s built and cultural environment also illustrate the tension between market-oriented self-help housing and the extension of government-led developmentalism, a tension which illustrates decolonisation’s major paradoxes, caught between nation-building and (critical) internationalism.
