communities developed a shared sense of the value of water and its connection to the physical space of the mountain.
Second, water management became a focal point of conflict during the colonial period. The struggles that ensued can best be understood as a clash between conflicting knowledges of water. This did not occur initially, nor was it necessarily inevitable. For seventy years, Europeans considered Kilimanjaro (fig. I.1) to be a place of water abundance, and this led them to embrace local hydrological and technical expertise. This changed in the 1930s amid rising populations, skyrocketing demand, and fears of increasing aridity and soil erosion. In response, colonial actors began to criticize local knowledge as harmful, unscientific, primitive, wasteful, and prodigal. Rather than use overt coercion, they undermined local knowledge by introducing “modern” ideas and practices grounded in “scientific” management. Initially, colonial actors disseminated new water management through political and legal tools and educational efforts. Starting in the 1950s, they employed new technologies such as pipelines and dams. Since the rise of the independent Tanzanian state, the government and development agencies have used all three (political tools, educational efforts, and new technologies) to push for changes in water management, ostensibly to provide people with more and better water. These interventions have promoted two major shifts in thinking about the resource: toward a centralized, technocratic model of management and toward a commodified notion of water as something for which people should pay.
Lastly, this book argues that the peoples of Kilimanjaro have responded in ways that reflect the diversity and dynamism of water-management knowledge. Communities proved adept at negotiating new ideas and practices, allowing them to take advantage of new opportunities and react to new challenges. Yet the introduction of new technologies, along with changing economic and social realities, gradually eroded many aspects of local knowledge, reduced the roles of local experts, and made people dependent on government-controlled water resources. This fractured the interconnected nature of water knowledge, which in turn sped the decline of local control and the shared sense of responsibility. Today, people still believe that water is their divine right, but most are detached from its everyday management. This fracturing of water-management knowledge has led to a situation where many have poorer access to water than their parents or even their ancestors. Government actors have struggled to provide water both because they lack resources and because they pursue inconsistent and contradictory development strategies. They are also hindered by their lack of appreciation for the cultural dimensions of water, their contempt for traditional technologies and customary community-based water management, and their belief that commoditization is essential to building sustainable water systems. Though neoliberal reform speaks of integrating local communities in water management, it offers users little effective power. This neglect of local opinions and knowledge is especially evident in recent discussions over global climate change and its relationship to the recession of the mountain’s glaciers.
FIGURE I.1. Kilimanjaro from Moshi Town (Matthew V. Bender)
WATER AND SOCIETY IN LITERATURE
In the past decade, water has emerged as a critical topic of study in the social sciences. Most published work has come from scholars and activists concerned with current or impending water scarcity.3 Works in this genre tend to approach the topic similarly. For one, they almost exclusively discuss water in terms of its physical properties and its necessity for sustaining life, focusing on specific cases in which the available water supply is inadequate due to excessive use, lack of investment, pollution, global water trading, or political manipulation. They also emphasize conflict that will arise from competition over water, the impending “water wars.” Many focus on the countries of the Global South that face the greatest challenges to accessing clean water. While such literature draws attention to rising scarcity in many parts of the world, it depicts water in limited terms: water’s physical utility and the conflicts over access. Such studies detach water from cultural specificity, suggesting that most people think of water in essentially the same way. A notable exception is Vandana Shiva’s Water Wars, which shows the spiritual and traditional role of water in communities in India, as well as the importance of culture in ensuring access to water.4
Historical scholarship that examines water in the context of social and political development actually predates this literature by decades. One of the earliest studies to examine this intersection was Karl Wittfogel’s 1957 book Oriental Despotism.5 In this work, Wittfogel sees the control of water, in particular large-scale irrigation works, as crucial to the rise of despotic power in Eastern societies such as dynastic China. Defining such societies as “hydraulic societies,” he argues that the development of waterworks and the bureaucratic structures needed to maintain them was critical to the development of large bureaucracies and despotic state power. Oriental Despotism broke ground as one of the first works to analyze the relationship between water management and political power. As such, it has become required reading in the field of water history. The book has inspired fierce criticism from historians concerned with Wittfogel’s Marxist interpretation of Asian history and from those who question the extent to which water was a critical factor in the rise of state power. Today, scholars consider the book as a piece that has raised important questions but whose conclusions no longer hold water.
In the years since Oriental Despotism, scholars have examined the relationship between water and power in various contexts. Their work has done much to extend the analysis beyond the physical, looking at how water control and management have intersected with broader social, cultural, and political issues. Donald Worster’s Rivers of Empire examines the centrality of water control to the rise of the American West. In this arid region, the control of water resources by political actors, and its manipulation by engineers, led not only to radically transformed landscapes but also to the economic rise of the region.6 Richard White’s seminal work on the Columbia River, The Organic Machine, eloquently shows how human and natural history are intertwined, to the point where one cannot be understood without the other.7 More recent works such as Paul Gelles’s Water and Power in Highland Peru, Stephen Lansing’s Priests and Programmers, and David Mosse’s The Rule of Water have gone further, looking at the intersection of politics and culture as related to irrigation works in Peru, Bali, and South India, respectively.8
Scholarship on water in African history has developed more slowly than scholarship on water in other regions, which is surprising given the continent’s struggles with water scarcity. The continent has, however, been the focus of a wealth of scholarship in the fields of agricultural and environmental history, but while much of this work touches on water issues, it tends to focus on land spaces. James McCann’s work on agriculture in Ethiopia, for example, discusses the importance of water by showing how farmers developed techniques specially adapted to the natural cycles of rainfall.9 Rain is an important factor influencing farmers, but the core unit of analysis is the land. Likewise, the work of scholars of Tanzania such as Chris Conte, James Giblin, Isaria Kimambo, Helge Kjekshus, and Gregory Maddox has shown the importance of water in shaping patterns of settlement, agriculture, and disease control.10 Scholarship that touches on water has extended beyond agriculture as well. Richard Grove’s work has shown the influence of water in forming colonial island “Edens” that shaped early conservationist thinking.11 Robert Harms’s study of the Nunu shows how the Congo River shaped the lives of those living along its banks.12 Steven Feierman’s Peasant Intellectuals discusses rainmakers, along with other community intellectuals, in Shambaa society.13 These works, and others on topics such as drought and boreholes, do not focus on water per se but rather on broader cultural, economic, and political issues that relate to water.14 Though engaging, they discuss water in a way that obscures its dimensionality and uniqueness.
In recent years, studies have emerged that feature water more centrally. A good example is the scholarship on
