Liquid Power by Erik Swyngedouw
An examination of the central role of water politics and engineering in Spain's modernization, illustrating water's part in forging, maintaining, and transforming social power.In this book, Erik Swyngedouw explores how water becomes part of the tumultuous processes of modernization and development. Using the experience of Spain as a lens to view the interplay of modernity and environmental transformation, Swyngedouw shows that every political project is also an environmental project.
In 1898, Spain lost its last overseas colony, triggering a period of post-imperialist turmoil still referred to as El Disastre. Turning inward, the nation embarked on "regeneration" and modernization. Water played a central role in this; during a turbulent period from the twentieth century into the twenty-first-through the Franco years and into the new era of liberal democracy-Spain's waterscapes were completely transformed, with large-scale projects that ranged from dam construction to irrigation to desalinization. Swyngedouw describes the contested political-ecological process that marked this transformation, showing that the Spain's diverse and contested paths to modernization were predicated on particular trajectories of environmental transformation.
After laying out his theoretical perspectives, Swyngedouw analyzes three periods of Spain's political-ecological modernization: the aspirations and stalled modernization of the early twentieth century; the accelerated efforts under the authoritarian Franco regime-which included six hundred dams, expanded hydroelectricity, and massive irrigation; and the changing hydro-social landscape under social democracy. Offering an innovative perspective on the relationship of nature and society, Liquid Power illuminates the political nature of nature.
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Concrete and Clay
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Street Science
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Environmental Justice and Environmentalism
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Sharing Cities
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Just Sustainabilities
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Neighborhood as Refuge
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Co-Cities
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City Cycling
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Grounding Urban Natures
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Fracking the Neighborhood
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Resigned Activism
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Technoscience and Environmental Justice
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Global Cities
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Blue and Green
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Toward the Healthy City
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Environmentalism Unbound
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Transit Life
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Changing Lanes
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Installing Automobility
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The Informal American City
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Barry Commoner and the Science of Survival
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The Making of Grand Paris
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The Enclave Economy
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American Urban Form
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Growing Smarter
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Civic Ecology
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Alternative Pathways in Science and Industry
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Pastoral Capitalism
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The Code of the City
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The Land That Could be
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The Globalization of Clean Energy Technology
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Flint Fights Back
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Materials Matter
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780262548960 |
| ISBN 10 | 0262548968 |
| Title | Liquid Power |
| Author | Erik Swyngedouw |
| Series | Urban And Industrial Environments |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | MIT Press Ltd |
| Year published | 2023-08-15 |
| Number of pages | 320 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |