Liquid Power
Author: Swyngedouw, Erik
ISBN: 9780262548960
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE US
Year first published: 15 Aug 2023
Pages: 320
Format: Paperback / softback
b>An examination of the central role of water politics and engineering in Spain's modernization, illustrating water's part in forging, maintaining, and transforming social power./b>BR>BR>b>An examination of the central role of water politics and engineering in Spain's modernization, illustrating water's part in forging, maintaining, and transforming social power./b>br>br>In this book, Erik Swyngedouw explores how water becomes part of the tumultuous processes of modernization and development. Using the experience of Spain as a lens to view the interplay of modernity and environmental transformation, Swyngedouw shows that every political project is also an environmental project.br>br>In 1898, Spain lost its last overseas colony, triggering a period of post-imperialist turmoil still referred to as i>El Disastre/i>. Turning inward, the nation embarked on "regeneration" and modernization. Water played a central role in this; during a turbulent period from the twentieth century into the twenty-first-through the Franco years and into the new era of liberal democracy-Spain's waterscapes were completely transformed, with large-scale projects that ranged from dam construction to irrigation to desalinization. Swyngedouw describes the contested political-ecological process that marked this transformation, showing that the Spain's diverse and contested paths to modernization were predicated on particular trajectories of environmental transformation.br>br>After laying out his theoretical perspectives, Swyngedouw analyzes three periods of Spain's political-ecological modernization- the aspirations and stalled modernization of the early twentieth century; the accelerated efforts under the authoritarian Franco regime-which included six hundred dams, expanded hydroelectricity, and massive irrigation; and the changing hydro-social landscape under social democracy. Offering an innovative perspective on the relationship of nature and society, i>Liquid Power /i>illuminates the political nature of nature.
ISBN: 9780262548960
Publisher: RANDOM HOUSE US
Year first published: 15 Aug 2023
Pages: 320
Format: Paperback / softback
b>An examination of the central role of water politics and engineering in Spain's modernization, illustrating water's part in forging, maintaining, and transforming social power./b>BR>BR>b>An examination of the central role of water politics and engineering in Spain's modernization, illustrating water's part in forging, maintaining, and transforming social power./b>br>br>In this book, Erik Swyngedouw explores how water becomes part of the tumultuous processes of modernization and development. Using the experience of Spain as a lens to view the interplay of modernity and environmental transformation, Swyngedouw shows that every political project is also an environmental project.br>br>In 1898, Spain lost its last overseas colony, triggering a period of post-imperialist turmoil still referred to as i>El Disastre/i>. Turning inward, the nation embarked on "regeneration" and modernization. Water played a central role in this; during a turbulent period from the twentieth century into the twenty-first-through the Franco years and into the new era of liberal democracy-Spain's waterscapes were completely transformed, with large-scale projects that ranged from dam construction to irrigation to desalinization. Swyngedouw describes the contested political-ecological process that marked this transformation, showing that the Spain's diverse and contested paths to modernization were predicated on particular trajectories of environmental transformation.br>br>After laying out his theoretical perspectives, Swyngedouw analyzes three periods of Spain's political-ecological modernization- the aspirations and stalled modernization of the early twentieth century; the accelerated efforts under the authoritarian Franco regime-which included six hundred dams, expanded hydroelectricity, and massive irrigation; and the changing hydro-social landscape under social democracy. Offering an innovative perspective on the relationship of nature and society, i>Liquid Power /i>illuminates the political nature of nature.
