Hydro-social Cohesion
This chapter focuses on local communities on the Iranian plateau, taking a holistic look at the systematic relationships between them and their water resources in a geographical–historical context. In Iran, water has always been the most crucial productio
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Hydro-social Cohesion
Abstract This chapter focuses on local communities on the Iranian plateau, taking a holistic look at the systematic relationships between them and their water resources in a geographical–historical context. In Iran, water has always been the most crucial production factor, exerting a great influence on socio-economic structures. However, the availability of water in the region has not been stable over time, and accordingly the local people have always had to evolve adaptation strategies through both technologies and social dynamics. This chapter examines the collective response of the local communities to their changing water resources, which occurs mostly through developing water management systems and water-based social mechanisms. The inhabitants could have enhanced their adaptation to their fluctuating water resources through social cohesion.This chapter tries to show how water affects the make-up of a local community through a variety of water-related social mechanisms, like cooperation, qanat maintenance, division of labor and waqf (charitable endowments). The chapter makes a distinction between two types of social cohesion, “inner-territorial cohesion” and “trans-territorial cohesion”, which are both associated with the geographical peculiarities of the water resources of a specific region. Inner-territorial cohesion pertains to a social bond that forms among the residents within a particular territory mainly based on their common interest in terms of their water resources, whereas trans-territorial cohesion refers to a social bond between different territories or neighboring communities within the hinterland of a particular qanat sharing the same water resource.
4.1
Introduction
In this chapter, social cohesion is the core concept, where individuals find more benefit and less cost in cooperative actions by managing common resources (Bruhn 2009). Social cohesion deals with the concept of social capital (Madonsela 2017) that is needed to ensure the sustainability of a society (Atkinson 2019). A common goal like water management serves as “collective directional movement” (Wilson and Mansour 2020) that is among the vital factors constituting social cohesion © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Labbaf Khaneiki, Cultural Dynamics of Water in Iranian Civilization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58900-4_4
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Hydro-social Cohesion
(Basati et al. 2019). And water management pertains to a set of social orders agreed upon by the members of a particular local community in order to: 1—maintain their common water resources, 2—preserve the relevant water catchment and physical water system, 3—divide water among the shareholders, 4—regulate water property, water market and conflict arbitration (Labbaf Khaneiki 2019). Qanat water management has entailed cooperative activities strengthening social cohesion. The loss of qanats not only takes its toll on water resources but also undermines social cohesion, which
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