Abstract
Gender is a relational process in which roles and interdependent ideas of masculinity and femininity are reproduced or challenged: a highly relational and fluid category, and its role in water dynamics, the most “relational” of all resources, is indeed crucial, albeit generally rendered invisible. Our aim in this paper is to contextualise crucial dynamics in gender relations that flow through water, by exploring local water systems in the Middle East (Jordan and Palestine) in relation to issues of access, control, distribution and “modernisation” of water supplies. First, we examine the relationality of water and gender dynamics as they have been discussed in the anthropological literature, in terms of how aspects of the “social life” of water are intertwined with ideas and roles of femininity and of masculinity within processes of modernisation. This leads us to focus on the first of our case studies—intensive irrigated agribusiness in Jordan—as a typical example of the masculinisation of water spaces within the bureaucratic encounter. We then present and discuss two case studies in the West Bank (Palestine) concerning, respectively, women’s daily domestic water practices in a refugee camp and irrigated water in a rural village: here, water relations may only be understood in the context of the broader political arena and in light of local, mutating, ideas of family.
This chapter is a joint work: Parts I, II have been written by Van Aken, Part III by De Donato. The analysis of the Jordan Valley case (Jordan) is based on a long fieldwork (1998–2003) on social practices and belonging in the “supergreen revolution” that reshaped water practices of the displaced communities who arrived in this region. The case studies in the West Bank, analysed by De Donato, are part of Master fieldwork (2009–2010) and PhD fieldwork (2014–2015) on water as political medium in social relations concerning the Palestinian nation-state building.
The original version of this chapter was revised. An erratum to this chapter can be found at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64046-4_12
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
In furrow-irrigation, large amounts of water are supplied less frequently; on the contrary, micro-irrigation requires smaller volumes, more frequently, with less labour involved.
- 2.
Wasta derives from wasit, “the one who inter-mediates”.
- 3.
Refugee status is associated with economic and social rights established by the Arab states and adopted by the PLO since decades, such as the waiving of domestic water charges. The PNA has been trying to force refugees to pay for water, by restricting water supplies to the houses in the refugee camp, in order to integrate refugees as citizens in proletarian suburbs.
- 4.
The PNA’s price for domestic water in 2012 (increasing with volume): from 4.5 shekel/m3 (5–10 m3) to 7.5 shekel/m3 (over 30 m3). The legal price for water from tankers, established by the PNA: 100 shekel/10 m3; illegal price on the black market: 300–400 shekel/10 m3.
Bibliography
Abu-Lughod L (1986) Veiled sentiments: honor and poetry in a Bedouin society. University of California, Berkeley
Al-Rimawi AS (1997) Women agricultural development in Jordan. GTZ, Amman
Boelens R, Getches D, Guevara-Gil A (2010) Out of the mainstream. Water rights, politics and identity. Earthscan, London
Casciarri B (2008) Du partage au clivage: marchandisation de l’eau et des rapports sociaux dans un village du Maroc présaharien (Tiraf, Vallée du Dra). In: Baumann E, Bazin L, Ould Ahmed P, Phélinas P, Selim M, Sobel R (eds) Anthropologues et économistes face à la globalisation. L’Harmattan, Paris, pp 87–127
De Donato A (2013) Water politics within the Palestinian nation-state building. The case of the Dheisha refugee camp and the Bethlehem district (West Bank). Journal des Anthropologues, Anthropologie et eau(x) 132–133(1):169–195
Dillman J (1989) Water rights in the occupied territories. J Palest Stud 19(1):46–71
Elmusa SS (1994) A harvest of technology. The super-green revolution in the Jordan Valley. Centre for Contemporary Arab Studies, Georgetown University, Washington, DC
Epstein Y (2002) The Palestinian labor market in Israel: between globalization and intifada. Palestine-Israel J Polit Econ Cult 8(4):149–154
Haviv I, Asaf L (2005) The hydrological system of Wadi Fuqeen springs. Institute of Earth Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, Jerusalem
Hilal J, Khan MH (2004) State formation under the PNA: potential outcomes and their viability. In: Khan MH, Amundsen I, Giacaman G (eds) State formation in Palestine: viability and governance during a social transformation. Routledge, London, pp 64–119
Illich I (1987) H2O and the waters of forgetfulness. Heyday, Berkeley
Kaika M, Swyngendouw E (2000) Fetishizing the modern city: the phantasmagoria or urban technological networks. Int J Urb Reg Res 24(1):120–138
Lahiri-Dutt K (ed) (2006) Fluid bonds. Views on gender and water. Stree, Kolkata
Laurie N (2005) Establishing development orthodoxy: negotiating masculinities in the water sector. Dev Chang 36(3):527–549
Limbert M (2001) The senses of water in an Omani town. Social Text 19(3):35–55
Lowi MR (1993) Water and power. The politics of scarce resource in the Jordan River Basin. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Mehta D (2001) The manufacture of popular perception of scarcity: dams and water-related narratives in Gujarat, India. World Dev 29(12):2025–2041
Moors A (1990) Gender hierarchy in a Palestinian village: the case of Al-Balad. In: Glavanis K, Glavanis P (eds) The rural Middle-East: peasant lives and modes of production. Zed Books Ltd., London, pp 195–209
Mosse D (1997) The symbolic making of a common propriety resource: history, ecology and locality in tank-irrigated landscape in South India. Dev Chang 28(3):467–504
Mosse D (2008) Epilogue: the cultural politics of water – a comparative perspective. J South Afr Stud 34(4):939–948
Naguib N (2009) Women, water and memory: recasting lives in Palestine. Brill, Leiden/Boston
Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (2016) Main statistical indicators in the West Bank http://www.pcbs.gov.ps/Portals/_Rainbow/StatInd/westbankInd2016E.htm. Accessed 30 Mar 2017
Rosenfeld H (1960) On determinants of the status of Arab village women. Man 60:66–70
Roth D, Boelens R, Zwarteveen M (eds) (2005) Liquid relations. Contested water rights and legal complexity. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick/London
Rothenberg C (1998) A review of the anthropological literature in English on the Palestinian hamula and the status of women. J Arab Islam Stud 2:24–48
Sa’ar A (2006) Feminine strength: reflections on power and gender in Israeli-Palestinian culture. Anthropol Q 79(3):397
Scott W (1998) Seeing like a state. How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. Yale University Press, New Haven/London
Shami S, Taminian L (1990) Women’s participation in the Jordanian labour force: a comparison of urban and rural patterns. In: Shami S, Tamanian L, Morsy SA, El Bakri ZB, Kameir E (eds) Work patterns and gender relations in Egypt, Jordan and Sudan. Berg Publishers Limited, Oxford, pp 132–155
Strang V (2005a) Taking the waters: cosmology, gender and material culture in the appropriation of water resources. In: Coles A, Wallace T (eds) Gender, water and development. Berg, Oxford, pp 21–39
Strang V (2005b) Common senses: water, sensory experience and the generation of meaning. J Mater Cult 10(1):92–120
Tamari S (2002) Who rules Palestine? J Palest Stud 31(4):102–113
Trottier J (1999) Hydropolitics in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. PASSIA Publication, Jerusalem
Trottier J (2000) Water and the challenge of Palestinian institution building. J Palest Stud 29(2):35–50
Trottier J (2013) The social construction of water management at the intersection of international conflict: the case of Al Auja. In: Berthelot P (ed) La géopolitique de l’eau dans le monde arabe: entre constantes et changements Eurorient, vol 44. L’Harmattan, Paris, pp 161–188
Van Aken M (2003) Facing Home. Palestinian Belonging in a valley of doubt. Shaker Publishing, Maastricht
Van Aken M (2012) La diversità delle acque. Antropologia di un bene molto comune. Altravista, Lungavilla
Van Aken M (2014) Participating in agribusiness: contested meanings of rurality and water in Jordan. In: Ayeb H, Saad R (eds) Agrarian transformation in the Arab world: persistent and emerging challenges, Cairo-Papers in Social Science, vol. 32, n. 2. The American University in Cairo Press, Cairo, pp 89–112
Van Aken M (2015) Virtual water, H2O and the de-socialisation of water. A brief anthropological journey. In: Antonelli M, Greco F (eds) The water we eat: combining virtual water and water footprints. Springer, London, pp 103–121
Van Aken M, Casciarri B (2008) Anthropologie et eau(x): affaires globales, eaux locales et flux de cultures. Journal des Anthropologues, Anthropologie et eau(x) 132–133(1):15–44
Van Aken M, Molle F, Venot J (2009) Squeezed dry: the historical trajectory of the lower Jordan River basin. In: Molle F, Wester P (eds) River basin trajectories: societies, environments and development, Comprehensive assessment of water management in agriculture series, vol 8. CABI, Wester/Cambridge, pp 20–46
Weizman E (2007) Hollow land. Israel’s architecture of occupation. Verso, London/New York
Worster D (1985) Rivers of empire. Water, aridity and the growth of the American west. Pantheon Books, New York
Zwarteveen M (2008) Men, masculinities and water powers in irrigation. Water Altern 1(1):111–130
Zwarteveen M (2010) A masculine water world: the politics of gender and identity in irrigation expert thinking. In: Boelens R, Getches D, Guevara A (eds) Out of the mainstream: water rights, politics and identity. Earthscan, London, pp 75–98
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
van Aken, M., De Donato, A. (2018). Gender and Water in the Middle East. Local and Global Realities. In: Fröhlich, C., Gioli, G., Cremades, R., Myrttinen, H. (eds) Water Security Across the Gender Divide. Water Security in a New World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64046-4_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64046-4_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-64044-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-64046-4
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)