A New Era for Irrigation (1996) / Chapter Skim
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2 THE CULTURE OF IRRIGATION
2 THE CULTURE OF IRRIGATION
Pages 20-45
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From page 20... ...
More profound than this physical alteration of the landscape is the effect of the human population that accompanied and caused this alteration and whose presence was made possible, in part, because of irrigation. Modern irrigation, beginning in the late nineteenth century, carried with it a sense of mission.
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From page 21... ...
The national-level prominence given to irrigation through the federal reclamation program further supported the development of an irrigation culture. Reclamation projects were extraordinarily successful in obtaining congressional fund
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From page 22... ...
In turn, irrigators generated the market crops that brought outside capital into the community. Irrigation culture established itself in the quasi-governmental institutions
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From page 23... ...
Even today, the directors of mutual ditch companies, irrigation districts, and conservancy districts are leading figures in their communities, constituting a power base with considerable influence over water issues at a state and even national level. In today's increasingly urbanized society, evidence of a culture of irrigation is much less apparent.
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From page 24... ...
This chapter begins by explaining the notion of cultural perspectives in relation to the material presented in the previous chapters. It then discusses five broad cultural themes or issues: understanding the culture of irrigation; cultural heritage within a changing cultural context; cultural diversity; cultural conflict and cooperation; and irrigation knowledge systems.
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From page 25... ...
The "irrigation communities" described in those chapters are the bearers of irrigation culture. The matrix patterns that link irrigation communities with changing technologies, water resources, and markets reflect cultural patterns.
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From page 26... ...
These questions then lead to more specific questions about cultural heritage, context, diversity, conflict, and knowledge.
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From page 27... ...
How do irrigation policies aggravate or alleviate conflict? What are the conditions that facilitate cooperation and conflict resolution?
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From page 28... ...
There is an enormous diversity of irrigation cultures. At the same time, several irrigation patterns and movements assumed national significance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
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From page 29... ...
Many in the West still believe that land without water has little value, which is literally true for irrigated cropland. This fundamental dependence on water gave rise to several deeply rooted concepts that guide agricultural water use and have profoundly influenced western water law.
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From page 30... ...
Indeed, one of the most remarkable aspects of irrigation culture is the institutions created to guide water use in situations of uncertainty and conflict. In addition to the water rights principles described above, irrigators crafted institutions to administer those rights, such as state engineers, water commissioners, and water masters, whose job was to deliver water within the established water rights structure and to help resolve conflicts among competing water users.
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From page 31... ...
Cultural Heritage Within a Changing Cultural Context Two hundred years ago, few American Indians in fishing-based communities would have envisioned the massive depletion of western streams that would ensue because of water development. A hundred years ago, few irrigators would have envisioned water reallocation for stream restoration or policies to conserve and adapt the cultural heritage of irrigation for the coming century.
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From page 32... ...
The latter use recalls an earlier era when the cultural heritage of fishing, although greater than that of irrigation, was ignored by the dominant culture a lesson for every field and aspect of environmental use and enjoyment.6 Even in pre-historic times, changes in the culture occurred. It has been suggested, for instance, that the abandonment of Hohokam canal irrigation involved in-migration by nonagrarian groups that altered the social organization of the region and destabilized large-scale irrigation (Doyel and Plog, 1980~.
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From page 33... ...
The nineteenth century witnessed the expansion and introduction of new irrigation cultures and the decline of others. Hispanic irrigation, initially established in the late sixteenth century, expanded in the Rio Grande valley, central Texas, southern Arizona, and coastal California (Dobkins, 1959; Hutchins, 1928;
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From page 34... ...
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries successful American Indian irrigators such as the Pima of central Arizona were reduced to poverty by upstream diverters (Hackenberg, 1983~. Asian irrigators in the western states were first encouraged and then severely persecuted.
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From page 35... ...
These experiments sometimes involved new social groups, new irrigation practices, and new market niches thereby creating new irrigation cultures. On the other hand, processes of modern diversification were followed by increasingly rapid diffusion of technology, crops, institutions, and people, which actively serve to reduce diversity to obtain uniform products and economies of scale.
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From page 36... ...
In the sixteenth century, Hispanic land and water development extended across central Texas, the Rio Grande valley, southern Arizona, and coastal California, adapting water management practices and institutions derived from Spanish, Roman, and Islamic sources (Baade, 1992; Dobkins, 1959; Ebright, 1979; Glick, 1972; Greenleaf, 1972; Meyer, 1984; Simmons, 1972~. Some of these water systems were built with slave labor, while others involved inspiring patterns of community cooperation for canal management combined with private and collective property rights (Hutchins, 1928; Meyer, 1984~.
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From page 37... ...
They established ditch companies, irrigation districts, and conservancy districts as civic institutions dedicated to cooperative water development and management. Recently, these groups have been joined by a growing number of nongovernmental alliances of agricultural, environmental, ethnic, and urban groups with interests in local watersheds (Natural Resources Law Center, 1996; Young and Congdon, 1994~.
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From page 38... ...
It hardly bears repeating that despite Supreme Court recognition of Indian water rights in 1908,7 and the moral language of treaties, few tribes have obtained their rightful share of material irrigation benefits to date. In some cases, the adoption of irrigation institutions (e.g., water rights, irrigation district laws, and administrative systems)
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From page 39... ...
balances this tribal philosophy with widespread traditions of western water law. How will tribal knowledge systems be translated into strategies for water use, and what are the implications for irrigated agriculture?
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From page 40... ...
Critics assert that those systems served some groups well in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but they do not serve the emerging interests of society well at all (Limerick, 1987; Wilkinson, 1988~. Irrigation will continue to be part of the cultural heritage in many areas and a vital economic sector in some, but it will no longer be the centerpiece of long-term water planning, use, and power.
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From page 41... ...
5. The doctrine of beneficial use is most fully developed in the western states, while the some what broader concept of reasonable use generally applies in the eastern states.
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From page 42... ...
1991. American Indian Water Rights and the Limits of the Law.
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From page 43... ...
1989. A promise made: The Navaho Indian Irrigation Project and water politics in the American West.
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1987. Command of the Waters: Iron Triangles, Federal Water Development, and Indian Water.
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From page 45... ...
1988. To settle a new land: An historical essay on water law in Colorado and in the American West.
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