IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ecanth/v6y2019i2p183-194.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

“Water is a gift that destroys”: Making a national natural resource in Lesotho

Author

Listed:
  • Colin Hoag

Abstract

The enclave state of Lesotho served as a labor reserve for South Africa's mining industries for more than a century before the the migrant labor economy declined dramatically in the 1990s. The Lesotho government has since hung its hopes on becoming another kind of reserve for South Africa: a water reservoir. A treaty between the two countries initiated the Lesotho Highlands Water Project, a multibillion‐dollar effort to dam and divert water from the mountains of Lesotho to the arid industrial areas south of Johannesburg. Just as the infrastructure of South African apartheid‐era labor reserves required “upstream” engineering, whether material, social, or symbolic, so too does its water reservoir. One example of symbolic engineering, described here, includes the construction of Lesotho as a place defined by water abundance. Elites in Lesotho have sought to deploy water as a symbol of national identity, sovereignty, and economic prosperity, integrating rivers, dam reservoirs, and hydroelectric infrastructure into its national iconography. But while it is true that water is abundant in rivers that flow out of the highlands, the country is plagued by regular droughts and spotty water access. Everyday notions of water in Lesotho emphasize these contingent, capricious, and even destructive qualities. Scrutinizing contradictions between the representation of water and local realities, I show that the production of water commodities entails more than water's disarticulation from its meaningful cultural contexts, as depicted in literature on water commodification elsewhere. Water commodification in Lesotho—and therefore Lesotho's status as a water reservoir for South African industry—is dependent on water engineers' ability first to link water to those local contexts. That is, engineers generate a type of water that is locally emplaced but unfamiliar to local people. In conclusion, I show how everyday notions of water in Lesotho call into question anthropological depictions of the “harmonious” water threatened by commodification.

Suggested Citation

  • Colin Hoag, 2019. "“Water is a gift that destroys”: Making a national natural resource in Lesotho," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(2), pages 183-194, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecanth:v:6:y:2019:i:2:p:183-194
    DOI: 10.1002/sea2.12149
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/sea2.12149
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/sea2.12149?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ecanth:v:6:y:2019:i:2:p:183-194. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=2330-4847 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.