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2005). This research throws up, at times, counter-intuitive results: for example,
improved understandings of the interactions between geomorphological, hydrologi-
cal and ecosystem processes mean that the recent trend towards decommissioning
dams in the United States may not always have positive impacts on all fi sh species
because of the disruption of aspects of ecosystems dependent upon the post-dam
fl uvial regime, which may be favourable to certain fi sh species (Marks et al.,
2006).
These fi ndings lend urgency to the task of exploring how water management
decisions might be infl uenced by broader social and political considerations, and in
turn how the water cycle might shape and constrain human societies (Swyngedouw
et al., 2002; Forsyth, 2005; Perrault, 2005). For example, Evenden's study of the
failure to dam Canada's Fraser River (the largest salmon river in the world and
the only large undammed river on North America's west coast) illustrates that
confl icts over resources (in this case, hydroelectricity versus the salmon fi sheries that
would be negatively affected by large dams) rest centrally on questions of political
identity and social power, rather than cost-benefi t analyses or narrow technocratic
considerations (Evenden, 2004). Other recent work in environmental geography has
drawn on political economy and political ecology to explore the multifaceted (social,
ecological, political and economic) interrelationship between water infrastructure
such as dams and water supply networks, and processes of modernisation, urbanisa-
tion and industrialisation (e.g. Gandy, 1997; 2002; Desfor and Keil, 2000; Kaika,
2004; Swyngedouw, 2004a). The large-scale mobilisation of water - rendered diffi -
cult by technical challenges and political contestation - in turn has important
implications for political governance. Kaika, for example, argues that nationalism
in Greece in the 19th century came to be defi ned through a project of 'hydrological
modernisation', whereby rural zones were sacrifi ced for water provision to a thirsty
and rapidly growing Athens in the 19th century. Gandy argues that the public health
implications of private-sector-run water supply systems in 19th-century New York
were an important impetus for municipalisation and the rise of the welfare state at
the urban scale (Gandy, 1997; 2002). Swyngedouw, in another example, argues that
Spain's 20th-century 'hydraulic modernisation' was both a response to failed colo-
nialism and a vehicle through which its mid-century dictatorship was entrenched
(Swyngedouw, 2004b).
Yet the links between the water cycle and human societies are much broader than
structures of political governance. Human geographers emphasise the mutual inter-
relationship between environment, material practices and symbolic culture, antici-
pating current debates in geography by several decades (e.g. White et al., 1972;
Cosgrove et al., 1992; Matless 1992; Oliver, 2000; Howarth 2001). This work has
been deliberately interdisciplinary, incorporating history, anthropology and cultural
theory; for example, the University of Nottingham's Water, Culture and Society
project, headed by geographer Stephen Daniels.
1
Urban geographers, on the other
hand, have documented how urban form and urbanisation processes are predicated
upon water availability and the ways in which water is incorporated into urban
infrastructure (Kaika, 2004; 2006; Heynen et al., 2005; Keil 2005).
In so doing, of course, geographers must walk a fi ne line between incorporating
materiality - in the varied senses of that term (Bakker and Bridge 2006) - and
avoiding the spectre of environmental determinism, which has long haunted the
discipline. Geographers seem to have done this more successfully than many other
