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Title Assistance and resistance of (hydro-)power: Contested relationships of control over the Volta River, Ghana
Full text http://hdl.handle.net/1885/264588; https://openresearch-repository.anu.edu.au/bitstream/1885/264588/3/01_Wissing_Assistance_and_resistance_of_2019.pdf.jpg
Date 2019
Author(s) Wissing, Kirsty
Abstract In this article, I examine human attempts to control water, and water's inherent potential for disorder, by focusing on the Volta River and Akosombo Dam in Ghana. I suggest that, in regard to the work of Wittfogel, Kwame Nkrumah's famous vision of Ghanaian nationalism and pan-African sovereignty was a kind of Wittfogelian reading of waterscapes as manipulated to facilitate political power. In the conception and construction of the massive Akosombo Dam in the traditional area of the Akwamu people in southern Ghana, Nkrumah attempted to reshape society through the control of water. Local Akwamu people have different visions about who can control water, how water can (or sometimes cannot) be controlled, and how deities are the most authoritative actors in any human engagements with water and its flow. Akwamu understandings of hydrosociality can be seen as a critique of Wittfogelian models of hydraulic societies. I also draw on the work of Fontein and also Keane, to suggest how water's 'indexical' (causal or connective) relationship to power is always a matter of contest, and water's material properties means it ultimately escapes definitive human control. - an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship.
Subject(s) Hydro-power; Wittfogel; Ghana; Akwamu; Nkrumah
Language en_AU
Publisher SAGE Publications
Type of publication Journal article
Format application/pdf
Source Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space
Rights © The Author(s) 2018
Identifier 0263-774X; 10.1177/0263774X18807482
Repository Canberra - Australian National University
Added to C-A: 2022-05-11;10:49:42