Mega Dams In World Literature

Author : Margaret Ziolkowski
Publisher : University Press of Colorado
ISBN 13 : 1646425979
Total Pages : 197 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Mega-Dams in World Literature written by Margaret Ziolkowski and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2024-04-15 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mega-Dams in World Literature reveals the varied effects of large dams on people and their environments as expressed in literary works, focusing on the shifting attitudes toward large dams that emerged over the course of the twentieth century. Margaret Ziolkowski covers the enthusiasm for large-dam construction that took place during the mid-twentieth-century heyday of mega-dams, the increasing number of people displaced by dams, the troubling environmental effects they incur, and the types of destruction and protest to which they may be subject. Using North American, Native American, Russian, Egyptian, Indian, and Chinese novels and poems, Ziolkowski explores the supposed progress that these structures bring. The book asks how the human urge to exploit and control waterways has affected our relationships to nature and the environment and argues that the high modernism of the twentieth century, along with its preoccupation with development, casts the hydroelectric dam as a central symbol of domination over nature and the power of the nation state. Beyond examining the exultation of large dams as symbols of progress, Mega-Dams in World Literature takes a broad international and cultural approach that humanizes and personalizes the major issues associated with large dams through nuanced analyses, paying particular attention to issues engendered by high modernism and settler colonialism. Both general and specialist readers interested in human-environment relationships will enjoy this prescient book.

Author : Patrick McCully
Publisher : Zed Books
ISBN 13 : 9781856499019
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Silenced Rivers written by Patrick McCully and published by Zed Books. This book was released on 2001-10-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Entirely updated in the light of the recent World Commission on Dams Report, and responding to it, this new edition of Patrick McCully's now classic study shows why large dams have become such a controversial technology in both industrialized and developing countries. The book explains the history and politics of dam building worldwide and shows why large dams have become so controversial. It details the ecological and human impacts of large dams, and shows how the 'national interest' argument is used to legitimize uneconomic and unjust projects which benefit elites while impoverishing tens of millions, describes the technical, safety and economic problems of dam technology, the structure of the international dam-building industry, and the role played by international banks and aid agencies. It tells the story of the rapid growth of the international anti-dam movement, and recounts some of the most important anti-dam campaigns around the world. McCully shows how the dam lobby and governments have reacted to criticism by cosmetic 'greening' of the dam-building process, and through state repression outlines the alternatives to dams, and argues that their replacement by less destructive alternatives requires the opening up of the industry's practices to public scrutiny.

Author : Francesco Giusti
Publisher : ICI Berlin Press
ISBN 13 : 3965580116
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.14/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Work of World Literature written by Francesco Giusti and published by ICI Berlin Press. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The contentious discourse around world literature tends to stress the ‘world’ in the phrase. This volume, in contrast, asks what it means to approach world literature by inflecting the question of the literary. Debates for, against, and around ‘world literature’ have brought renewed attention to the worldly aspects of the literary enterprise. Literature is studied with regard to its sociopolitical and cultural references, contexts and conditions of production, circulation, distribution, and translation. But what becomes of the literary when one speaks of world literature? Responding to Derek Attridge’s theory of how literature ‘works’, the contributions in this volume explore in diverse ways and with attention to a variety of literary practices what it might mean to speak of ‘the work of world literature’. The volume shows how attention to literariness complicates the ethical and political conundrums at the centre of debates about world literature.

Author : Esha Shah
Publisher : MDPI
ISBN 13 : 3038978108
Total Pages : 240 pages
Book Rating : 4.07/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Contested Knowledges written by Esha Shah and published by MDPI. This book was released on 2019-05-20 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Water acquisition, storage, allocation and distribution are intensely contested in our society, whether, for instance, such issues pertain to a conflict between upstream and downstream farmers located on a small stream or to a large dam located on the border of two nations. Water conflicts are mostly studied as disputes around access to water resources or the formulation of water laws and governance rules. However, explicitly or not, water conflicts nearly always also involve disputes among different philosophical views. The contributions to this edited volume have looked at the politics of contested knowledge as manifested in the conceptualisation, design, development, implementation and governance of large dams and mega-hydraulic infrastructure projects in various parts of the world. The special issue has explored the following core questions: Which philosophies and claims on mega-hydraulic projects are encountered, and how are they shaped, validated, negotiated and contested in concrete contexts? Whose knowledge counts and whose knowledge is downplayed in water development conflict situations, and how have different epistemic communities and cultural-political identities shaped practices of design, planning and construction of dams and mega-hydraulic projects? The contributions have also scrutinised how these epistemic communities interactively shape norms, rules, beliefs and values about water problems and solutions, including notions of justice, citizenship and progress that are subsequently to become embedded in material artefacts.

Author : Sanjeev Khagram
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501727397
Total Pages : 287 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dams and Development written by Sanjeev Khagram and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Big dams built for irrigation, power, water supply, and other purposes were among the most potent symbols of economic development for much of the twentieth century. Of late they have become a lightning rod for challenges to this vision of development as something planned by elites with scant regard for environmental and social consequences—especially for the populations that are displaced as their homelands are flooded. In this book, Sanjeev Khagram traces changes in our ideas of what constitutes appropriate development through the shifting transnational dynamics of big dam construction. Khagram tells the story of a growing, but contentious, world society that features novel and increasingly efficacious norms of appropriate behavior in such areas as human rights and environmental protection. The transnational coalitions and networks led by nongovernmental groups that espouse such norms may seem weak in comparison with states, corporations, and such international agencies as the World Bank. Yet they became progressively more effective at altering the policies and practices of these historically more powerful actors and organizations from the 1970s on. Khagram develops these claims in a detailed ethnographic account of the transnational struggles around the Narmada River Valley Dam Projects in central India, a huge complex of thirty large and more than three thousand small dams. He offers further substantiation through a comparative historical analysis of the political economy of big dam projects in India, Brazil, South Africa, and China as well as by examining the changing behavior of international agencies and global companies. The author concludes with a discussion of the World Commission on Dams, an innovative attempt in the late 1990s to generate new norms among conflicting stakeholders.

Author : Dzodzi Tsikata
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9047406559
Total Pages : 463 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Living in the Shadow of the Large Dams written by Dzodzi Tsikata and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2006-05-01 with total page 463 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book on dam-affected communities of the Volta River Project breaks with the mould and tackles the question of long term environmental and socio-economic impacts and responses of two often neglected groups of communities- the downstream and lakeside communities.

Author : Cecilia Tortajada
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 3642235700
Total Pages : 415 pages
Book Rating : 4.02/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Impacts of Large Dams: A Global Assessment written by Cecilia Tortajada and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-02-02 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most controversial issues of the water sector in recent years has been the impacts of large dams. Proponents have claimed that such structures are essential to meet the increasing water demands of the world and that their overall societal benefits far outweight the costs. In contrast, the opponents claim that social and environmental costs of large dams far exceed their benefits, and that the era of construction of large dams is over. A major reason as to why there is no consensus on the overall benefits of large dams is because objective, authoritative and comprehensive evaluations of their impacts, especially ten or more years after their construction, are conspicuous by their absence. This book debates impartially, comprehensively and objectively, the positive and negative impacts of large dams based on facts, figures and authoritative analyses. These in-depth case studies are expected to promote a healthy and balanced debate on the needs, impacts and relevance of large dams, with case studies from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and Latin America.

Author : ICOLD CIGB
Publisher : CRC Press
ISBN 13 : 1000729362
Total Pages : 884 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Twenty-Seventh International Congress on Large Dams Vingt-Septième Congrès International des Grands Barrages written by ICOLD CIGB and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2022-05-25 with total page 884 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The International Committee on Large Dams (ICOLD) held its 27th International Congress in Marseille, France (12-19 November 2021). The proceedings of the congress focus on four main questions: 1. Reservoir sedimentation and sustainable development; 2. Safety and risk analysis; 3. Geology and dams, and 4. Small dams and levees. The book thoroughly discusses these questions and is indispensable for academics, engineers and professionals involved or interested in engineering, hydraulic engineering and related disciplines.

Author : Allen F. Isaacman
Publisher : Ohio University Press
ISBN 13 : 0821444506
Total Pages : 309 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Dams, Displacement, and the Delusion of Development written by Allen F. Isaacman and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-10 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cahora Bassa Dam on the Zambezi River, built in the early 1970s during the final years of Portuguese rule, was the last major infrastructure project constructed in Africa during the turbulent era of decolonization. Engineers and hydrologists praised the dam for its technical complexity and the skills required to construct what was then the world’s fifth-largest mega-dam. Portuguese colonial officials cited benefits they expected from the dam—from expansion of irrigated farming and European settlement, to improved transportation throughout the Zambezi River Valley, to reduced flooding in this area of unpredictable rainfall. “The project, however, actually resulted in cascading layers of human displacement, violence, and environmental destruction. Its electricity benefited few Mozambicans, even after the former guerrillas of FRELIMO (Frente de Libertação de Moçambique) came to power; instead, it fed industrialization in apartheid South Africa.” (Richard Roberts) This in-depth study of the region examines the dominant developmentalist narrative that has surrounded the dam, chronicles the continual violence that has accompanied its existence, and gives voice to previously unheard narratives of forced labor, displacement, and historical and contemporary life in the dam’s shadow.

Author : Christine Folch
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 069118660X
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hydropolitics written by Christine Folch and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-03 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth look at the people and institutions connected with the Itaipoe Dam, the world's biggest producer of renewable energy, Hydropolitics is a groundbreaking investigation of the world's largest power plant and the ways energy shapes politics and economics.ics.