Article ID: CBB000950519

From Colonial to Postcolonial Irrigation Technology: Technological Romanticism and the Revival of Colonial Water Tanks in Java, Indonesia (2008)

unapi

Oosterhout, Dianne Van (Author)


Technology and Culture
Volume: 49
Pages: 701--726


Publication Date: 2008
Edition Details: Part of a special issue: Water
Language: English

Linking up with current discussions on the complex relationship between science, technology, and the civilizing missions in the former colonies, the author describes how technological romanticism shaped the development of a colonial irrigation technology in the Netherlands East Indies. Based on assumptions of the moral role of engineers in community development and the supposed greater fairness of local irrigation systems, engineers developed numerous hybrid irrigation technologies to support local rice production. The example of the development and almost instant failure of colonial waduk (water tanks) shows just how much engineers relied on the civilizing role of technology to solve differences in access to irrigation water. Currently, Indonesian farmers employ a similar kind of technological romanticism by imagining a fair and just colonial technological tradition that in fact failed---and that was also never introduced in this area. The waduk is now eagerly accepted as a fair way, based on colonial tradition, to solve differences in access to irrigation water. These imagined traditions appear as a legitimation for attempting to decentralize the power of the state and to counter nepotism, represented by local bureaucrats and vested interests.

...More
Included in

Article Reuss, Martin (2008) Seeing Like an Engineer: Water Projects and the Mediation of the Incommensurable. Technology and Culture (p. 531). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB000950519/

Similar Citations

Book G. Roger Knight; (2018)
Sugar, Steam and Steel: The Industrial Project in Colonial Java, 1830-1885 (/isis/citation/CBB104279760/)

Chapter Fleischer, Alette; (2010)
(Ex)Changing Knowledge and Nature at the Cape of Good Hope, circa 1652--1700 (/isis/citation/CBB001031669/)

Book Isaacman, Allen F; Isaacman, Barbara; (2013)
Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development: Cahora Bassa and Its Legacies in Mozambique, 1965--2007 (/isis/citation/CBB001420361/)

Article Laurence Monnais; (2021)
The Reinvention of an Appropriate Tradition or the Colonial Birth of Vietnamese Medicine (/isis/citation/CBB115572466/)

Book Few, Martha; Tortorici, Zeb; (2013)
Centering Animals in Latin American History (/isis/citation/CBB001422387/)

Book Reynolds, Nicole; (2010)
Building Romanticism: Literature and Architecture in Nineteenth-Century Britain (/isis/citation/CBB001211500/)

Article Emmanuel Delille; Ivan Crozier; (2018)
Historicizing transcultural psychiatry: people, epistemic objects, networks, and practices (/isis/citation/CBB039081637/)

Book Maria Paula Diogo; Dirk van Laak; (2016)
Europeans Globalizing: Mapping, Exploiting, Exchanging (/isis/citation/CBB904918698/)

Article Moon, Suzanne; (2010)
Introduction (/isis/citation/CBB001033653/)

Authors & Contributors
Moon, Suzanne Marie
Crozier, Ivan
Broere, Sebastiaan
Tortorici, Zeb
Araral, Eduardo
Valle, Ivonne del
Concepts
Colonialism
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Netherlands, colonies
Technology and culture
Postcolonialism
Technology
Time Periods
20th century, early
19th century
18th century
20th century
17th century
16th century
Places
Java (Indonesia)
Americas
United States
East Indies
South Asia
Mozambique
Institutions
Dutch East India Company
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment