Authors
Esha Shah, Rutgerd Boelens, Bert Bruins
Publication date
2019/2/26
Source
Water
Volume
11
Issue
3
Pages
417
Publisher
MDPI
Description
The contributions to the Special Issue on Contested Knowledges: Water Conflicts on Large Dams and Mega-Hydraulic Development have looked at the politics of contested knowledge as manifested in the conceptualization, design, development, implementation and governance of large dams and mega-hydraulic infrastructure projects in various parts of the world. The contributing authors have amply demonstrated that the mega-hydraulic developments all over the world involve profound socio-technical, ecological and territorial transformations. The contributions have also abundantly shown how multiple knowledge claims are constructed using different grounds for claiming the truth about water design, development and implementation, and how both dominant and ‘local’,‘vernacular’, or ‘indigenous’ knowledge frameworks underlying (or disputing) hydraulic projects and water control regimes, are not neutral nor ‘independent’, but culturally and politically laden and historically produced—and often, co-created. In this concluding chapter we aim to give an overview and also briefly discuss and summarize the main findings of the contributions addressing the core question: Which knowledge regimes and claims on mega-hydraulic projects are encountered, and how are they shaped, validated, negotiated and contested in concrete contexts? For that, the authors have focused also on the issue of whose knowledge counts and whose knowledge is downplayed in water development conflict situations, and how different epistemic communities and cultural-political identities (including class, ethnic, gender or professional forms of identification) have …
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