Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) is a transnational multi-dam infrastructural development project to sell water from Lesotho to South Africa. Based on field and secondary research in Lesotho, I demonstrate how infrastructural projects such as the LHWP shape a geography of risk and become a medium through which riskscapes are created or exacerbated in both South Africa and Lesotho. Project-induced changes interacted with and intensified co-occurring vulnerabilities for communities directly and indirectly affected by the LHWP over time. I focus specifically on risks to livelihood, food insecurity and health, within the context of increased climatic shocks in the region.

The construction phases of large dam and infrastructural projects often extend over long periods of time, creating social, environmental, cultural, political, and economic consequences in the proximate communities and landscapes. The temporality of the phases of the project – from planning to construction to post-construction – reveal more layered and wide-ranging consequences from the social and environmental changes that result, sharpened by greater attention to how these changes unfold across multiple timescales and sites of the project. Using the case study of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), I draw on a political ecology approach that uses longitudinal data, including interviews, document analysis, and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Lesotho since 1997, to illustrate how active project narratives draw from and promulgate an affective economy of anticipation in ways that aim to both sustain the hope of people affected by the project and contain their criticism of the project amidst a continued investment by the state in the expansion of the LHWP. As people directly affected experience disjunctures between the promises and the realities of the project over time, subsequent phases of the project are simultaneously renewed and recast through a logic of improvement that emphasizes changes in the implementation of the project while continuing to invest in the future imaginary of development that requires going forward with project plans. A logic of continuity and improvement structures this continued commitment to the capital intensive LHWP through the strategic mobilization of phases that scaffold both the material and physical dimensions of the project, but also the affective and anticipatory hopes of prosperity that the project represents. In this case, it also reveals how project authorities weave these dimensions – the material and the aspirational – into specific planned changes and improvements to address previous and ongoing concerns as projects progress over time. This longitudinal approach demonstrates the importance of temporal and affective dimensions to our understanding of the complex, multi-faceted consequences of resource extractive mega-dam projects such as the LHWP, particularly as they further rationalize the resource extractive approach to economic development in the region.Keywords: development, dams, infrastructure, political ecology, temporality, affect, resource extraction, economy of anticipation, displacement, construction, Lesotho, Southern Africa

The construction phases of large dam and infrastructural projects often extend over long periods of time, creating social, environmental, cultural, political, and economic consequences in the proximate communities and landscapes. The temporality of the phases of the project – from planning to construction to post-construction – reveal more layered and wide-ranging consequences from the social and environmental changes that result, sharpened by greater attention to how these changes unfold across multiple timescales and sites of the project. Using the case study of the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), I draw on a political ecology approach that uses longitudinal data, including interviews, document analysis, and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Lesotho since 1997, to illustrate how active project narratives draw from and promulgate an affective economy of anticipation in ways that aim to both sustain the hope of people affected by the project and contain their criticism of the project amidst a continued investment by the state in the expansion of the LHWP. As people directly affected experience disjunctures between the promises and the realities of the project over time, subsequent phases of the project are simultaneously renewed and recast through a logic of improvement that emphasizes changes in the implementation of the project while continuing to invest in the future imaginary of development that requires going forward with project plans. A logic of continuity and improvement structures this continued commitment to the capital intensive LHWP through the strategic mobilization of phases that scaffold both the material and physical dimensions of the project, but also the affective and anticipatory hopes of prosperity that the project represents. In this case, it also reveals how project authorities weave these dimensions – the material and the aspirational – into specific planned changes and improvements to address previous and ongoing concerns as projects progress over time. This longitudinal approach demonstrates the importance of temporal and affective dimensions to our understanding of the complex, multi-faceted consequences of resource extractive mega-dam projects such as the LHWP, particularly as they further rationalize the resource extractive approach to economic development in the region.Keywords: development, dams, infrastructure, political ecology, temporality, affect, resource extraction, economy of anticipation, displacement, construction, Lesotho, Southern Africa

L'article montre que la rhétorique du gouvernement tadjik sur le « mythe de la radicalisation » relative à la menace « islamiste » dans le pays rend difficile la distinction entre ce récit et le véritable danger posé par les mouvements islamistes. Cela crée un climat opaque et confus au Tadjikistan avec des acteurs différents, un droit restreint à la liberté de religion pour les citoyens tadjiks et un gouvernement tadjik pas toujours coopératif. Il est donc difficile pour l'UE d'aborder le phénomène de manière adéquate. L'article indique finalement comment l'UE peut affiner sa stratégie actuelle en appliquant des définitions exactes, en fixant des objectifs clairs et réalistes, en tenant compte des opportunités de coopération mondiales et régionales, et en se concentrant sur son approche en termes de « soft power ».

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the intersections of gender, development and globalization through an investigation of the ways in which a large‐scale, internationally financed multi‐dam development project, the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), impacts gender relations through its physical presence in the highlands of Lesotho, Southern Africa.Design/methodology/approachField research including interviews with men and women impacted by the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP) in Lesotho in 1997 and 2000‐2001.FindingsThe paper finds that, by positioning themselves as sex workers for foreign development workers, non‐elite women are able to access development monies indirectly. The devaluation of women's labor on farms and in the household excludes them as legitimate receivers of "development", reproducing male ownership and patriarchal authority, and ultimately pushing some women into work that is precarious, low wage, risky, and often demeaning.Research limitations/implicationsThis research highlights the complicated and contradictory gendered gains and losses in the development context and how they mirror larger globalization processes and their effects on gender inequality. Further research with sex workers is needed.Originality/valueFeminist inquiries into globalization, particularly those focused on militarization and economic restructuring, have revealed the gendered effects of globalizing processes as they take place in particular locales (military bases, industries, corporations, factories). The ways in which the presence of sites of development creates particular gendered dynamics have been understudied. Incorporating analysis of the presence of large‐scale development projects in local areas offers opportunities to link the investigation of development in a larger context of globalization, and reveals a more nuanced reading of the gendered politics of development.