Fluid Modernity offers an innovative, encompassing, historical grasp of the politics of water in the Middle East in the context of modern capitalism and world politics. Drawing upon conceptions of power by Foucault and Agamben, it examines how water, through its modern capitalist production, is transformed into a water apparatus that binds people to power. In trans-boundary watercourses, states get involved in the formation of international governmentalities.
The book revisits the history of fluid modernity in the Middle East from late Ottoman times to the present. It focuses on water conflict and cooperation between states (Israel and Arab states and Turkey, Syria and Iraq), on state policies towards subaltern subjects (Israel and Turkey in relation to Palestinians and Kurds, respectively) and on the water politics of rebellious movements. After a conceptual chapter discussing fluid modernity, the book traces water politics in the region in a diachronic perspective. It explores how water diplomacy, infrastructure loans, reservoir construction, discourses of sovereignty and conflict have weighed on the development of governance and governmentality in the region.
Fluid Modernity
will be of great interest to postgraduates, researchers, academics and intellectuals interested in Middle East Studies, Hydropolitics, Water and Society, Geopolitics, Political Theory, Resistance as well as to NGOs dealing with water.
Author(s): Gilberto Conde
Series: Routledge Focus on Modern Subjects
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 138
City: London
Cover
Half Title
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents
Maps
Series Editor’s Statement
Preface
Glossary of Concepts
Introduction
1 On Fluid Modernity
1.1 A Fluid Mechanism
1.2 Fluid Modernity and Capitalism
1.3 The Middle East Hydropolitics Debate
1.4 Conclusions
Notes
2 Making Fluid Modernity in the Middle East
2.1 Water and the Colonisation of Palestine
2.2 The Tigris-Euphrates and European Hegemony
2.3 Cold War, the Nile and the Jordan River
2.4 Cold War, the Asi and the Euphrates
2.5 Aswan and the War of 1956
2.6 Conclusions
Notes
3 Fluid Modernity in Coercive Mode
3.1 The Middle East Political Context
3.2 Flexing the Muscle Over the Jordan River
3.3 The Jordan-Yarmuk Water Apparatus
3.4 Frictions Along the Tigris-Euphrates: 1960–1976
3.5 GAP in the Governmental Reason
3.6 In the Absence of Governmentality: the 1980s
3.7 Conclusions
Notes
4 Fluid Modernity in Conditional Mode
4.1 The Context From 1991 Onwards
4.2 Water and Arab-Israeli Negotiations
4.2.1 The Israeli Water Apparatus On the Palestinians
4.2.2 Water and Jordanian-Israeli Peace
4.2.3 Water in Syrian-Israeli Negotiations
4.2.4 Water in the Lebanese-Israeli File
4.3 A Tigris-Euphrates Water Apparatus
4.3.1 The Tigris-Euphrates Apparatus in the 1990s
4.3.2 A New Governmental Reason in the Making
4.3.3 The Governmental Reason Breakdown
4.4 Conclusions
Notes
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
