Focussed
review:
Barnes,
J., 2012. Pumping possibility: Agricultural expansion through desert
reclamation in Egypt.
Social
Studies of Science [online],
42(4),
517-538.
Barnes'
article investigates the role of pumps in Egypt, and their capacity
to provide and deprive access to water from the Nile for land
reclamation. The article refers to Marianne
de Laet and Annemarie Mol's (2000) research on the Zimbabwean bush
pump, and shares with it the water pump as a focus of study, and the
employment of actor-network theory (ANT) as a material-semiotic
approach which maps both human and non-human actors onto
heterogeneous networks. However, while de Laet and Mol openly found
the bush pump "easy
to love" (p.252) due to its inherent fluidity in building
community
relations in Zimbabwe, both at the local and national level, Barnes
takes a more critical stance, revealing that the pump often "excludes
rather than includes, deprives rather than supplies, divides rather
than unites" (Barnes 2012, p.534). Barnes suggests that the
difference in their findings may be partly due her decision to
situate the artifact in its material surroundings. While Laet and Mol
bring to light the bush pump's fluidity by innovatively including it
as an actor, they fail to include the fluid critical to the pump's
success: water. By focussing on the way the pumps interact with
water, Barnes is able to bring to light their connection to other
pumps, other sources of water, and their consequent entanglement into
a vast, heterogeneous network involving multiple actors, both human
and non-human, spanning not just the immediate environment but the
level of national and international politics.
Based
on Barnes' own 16 month ethnographic research culminating in two case
studies, the article paints a vivid and detailed picture of the
material and social geography. The reader is invited to travel back
in time to join Barnes as she takes account of the farms and
villages, the incline of the desert from the cultivated banks of the
river, the quality of the soil, the state controlled network of
irrigation canals feeding off the Nile, the more-or-less unofficial
pumps feeding off those canals as well as functional descriptions of
the different pumps involved. We meet powerful investors, angry
smallholders, graduate farmers and ministry officials. Even former
President Mubarak and the revolution that led to his resignation has
a part to play. In the concluding sentence, and many times throughout
the paper, Barnes finds that "the pumps that make desert
reclamation possible in Egypt are fracturing community, generating
new points of tension, resistance, and inequality".
Therein
lies the paper's most obvious vulnerability. In following ANT's
method the research has left itself open to the same criticisms that
are directed towards ANT, primarily attacking the notion that
non-humans, in this case water pumps, exercise agency. For this
shortcoming Barnes' work pays in a number of ways. Firstly, critics
argue that the idea is simply "absurd" (Amsterdamska 1990,
p.501) on the intuitive basis that non-rational technologies can not
be held responsible for splintering communities. Secondly, by
removing the distinction between human and object and representing
social relations as horizontal heterogeneous networks, it is "less
well equipped for pursuing a critical account of organizations, that
is, one which recognises the unfolding nature of reality"
(Whittle and Spicer 2008, p.612) and as a consequence investigations
become overly descriptive but lack sociological scrutiny. Barnes has
included many factors in her examination of uneven water distribution
while stressing the role of the pump, however discussion of more
traditional points of power imbalance, such as class and gender, are
either notably sparse or are entirely absent. Moreover, in pursuit of
an evermore inventive focus of inquiry, examining not only the pump
but "the material interactions between a technology, such as a
pump, and its surroundings", Barnes has further distanced from
her analysis the role of social forces.
One
way to avoid some of these problems would be to employ the
methodology espoused by theorists such as Pinch and Bijker (1984)
under the name Social Construction of Technology (SCOT). This
approach, as the name suggests, "points to technology as being
through and through social" (Pinch 1996, p.22). The methodology
involves identifying relevant social groups and demonstrating
interpretive flexibility which would correct the lean towards
technological determinism (Pinch and Bijker 1984).
Another
alternative would use Giddens' (1999) notion of "manufactured
risk... risk created by the very progression of human development,
especially by the progression of science and technology" (p.4).
As water access along the Nile is increasingly determined by
technology and politics, the risk of low quantity or poor quality
water may be characterised less by external causes such as fate, god
or nature and more by causes internal to society such as political
decisions or irresponsible science.
However,
supporters of ANT argue that these apparent weaknesses are actually
their greatest strengths. In treating humans and non-humans
symmetrically, Barnes is following the theoretical approach of
viewing society and nature as "coproduced" (Latour 1992,
p.287). The empirical benefit of this is to avoid foreclosing
potentially sociologically relevant factors. Latour justifies the
ascription of agency to artifacts with reference to the NRA slogan,
'guns don't kill people, people kill people'. For Latour, both people
and guns have the potential for various functions which combine,
along with many more besides, to effect action (Latour 1999, p.176).
Similarly, it is only through a combination of the pumps, the water,
the farmers, investors and everything else Barnes diligently
identifies and examines that water is moved and land flourishes for
some and dries up for others and communities are either strengthened
or fractured. Another consequence of Barnes' approach is to identify
the utility of exploring the material context of an artifact. This
line of inquiry may prove to be crucial in coming years due to the
increasing threat on global water supplies. According to the UN
World Water Development Report
(WWAP 2012) the pressure on water supplies from urbanisation, climate
change and a rising demand for food creates a complex situation which
may require new forms of analysis that focus on interactions with
water. In the article under review Barnes provides an excellent
example of what this might look like.
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Social
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on 26/2/2014.
