Despotic Hydraulic Civilizations

The essence of irrigation is not land, nor is it really water--it is resource management.
 (Fleuret 1985:116)

Karl Wittfogel (1896-1988) was a former Marxist, turned staunch communist, turned anti-communist (particularly Maoist and Leninist iterations of the ideology) historian. He left Germany for the USA by way of England in the mid-1930s. Wittfogel is best known for his book Oriental Despotism: a comparative study of total power (1957) which argued for the existence of 'hydraulic civilizations.'

Hydraulic civilizations were societies whose agricultural enterprises were dependent on large scale irrigation that in turn required substantial centralized control. Elaborate management and control was needed to operate the system. This eventually led to a monopoly of absolute power which dominated the economy in a complicated, despotic network of bureaucracy. Additional characteristics of these societies include: use of mass labour, organizational hierarchy, impersonal government, the development of towns, the specialization of jobs, and the development of class systems.The system was described as 'Oriental.' Wittfogel's use of the term Oriental is in the European manner that refers to that which is not of the Occident (the West, Europe). Wittfogel gave examples hydraulic civilizations in China, Egypt, India, Mesopotamia, pre-Colombian Mexico and Peru.

Though archaic, as far as the lifespan of academic literature goes, and highly critiqued, Wittfogel is an interlocutor and canonical for  many in the social sciences writing on irrigation, particularly anthropology, where "the relationship between irrigation and society is a classic anthropological concern" (Fleuret 1985:103). Gelles observes that despite critiques to Wittfogel's hydraulic hypothesis or Oriental despotism, "an emphatically objectivist bias continues to guide scholarly and applied research on irrigation and other forms of common property management" (Gelles 2002:7).  This statement is almost correct; to adhere to some sort of method is part of the scientific method that social science has modeled itself on, yet with quasi-mandatory reflexivity, and the legitimization of academic activists and engaged academia, and the spur to various forms of social media, in recent times that objectivism has become somewhat less objective.

Citations:
Fleuret, Patrick. 1985. “The Social Organization of Water Control in the Taita Hills, Kenya” American Ethnologist 12(1):103-118.

Gelles, Paul H. 2000. Water and Power in Highland Peru: The Cultural Politics of Irrigation and Development. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Wittfogel, Karl. 1957. Oriental Despotism: a comparative study of total power.New Haven CT: Yale University Press.

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