Hidden Waters - The Roles of Culture in High-Tech Jordan Valley (Jordan)

Abstract

The Jordan Valley (Jordan) is today a post-modern laboratory of agronomic and hydraulic techniques of arid areas where irrigation represents a conflict interface between different life-worlds. The new hydraulic technical order of the water network is characterized today by continuous disorder in a frame of increasing scarcity, ecological and economic unsustainability and competition: irrigators creatively manipulate the complex and hidden water network as a main strategy, daily reinserting water in its political and cultural dimensions. In the frame of scarcity and new “community” participation policies, what is at stake are different ideas of community between development actors and local irrigators: around water, different cultural perceptions of place, of belonging and of society encounter and struggle.

Keywords: Water, Community, Scarcity, Jordan Valley, Irrigation