Includes material on irrigation in Mexico, Somalia, Morocco, the Andes, Bali, Cape Verde, Iran, and Sri Lanka.

A poignant study of how a group of poor white urban youth find respite from poverty, violence, and racism in a local community center.

An examination of the role and contributions of the four Welland Canals to the development of Niagara Peninsula communities.

An examination of the role and contributions of the four Welland Canals to the development of Niagara Peninsula communities.

Water is the key to human civilization. Most of the ancient civilization had its roots to river basins, where people-water interaction was the key aspect. This book offers analytical case studies on different aspects of water communities, which is defined as the human-water interaction process.

A historical and ethnographic study of the conflict between global transportation and rural development as the two intersect at the Panama Canal. In this innovative book, Ashley Carse traces the water that flows into and out from the Panama Canal to explain how global shipping is entangled with Panama's cultural and physical landscapes. By following container ships as they travel downstream along maritime routes and tracing rivers upstream across the populated watershed that feeds the canal, he explores the politics of environmental management around a waterway that links faraway ports and markets to nearby farms, forests, cities, and rural communities. Carse draws on a wide range of ethnographic and archival material to show the social and ecological implications of transportation across Panama. The Canal moves ships over an aquatic staircase of locks that demand an enormous amount of fresh water from the surrounding region. Each passing ship drains 52 million gallons out to sea—a volume comparable to the daily water use of half a million Panamanians. Infrastructures like the Panama Canal, Carse argues, do not simply conquer nature; they rework ecologies in ways that serve specific political and economic priorities. Interweaving histories that range from the depopulation of the U.S. Canal Zone a century ago to road construction conflicts and water hyacinth invasions in canal waters, the book illuminates the human and nonhuman actors that have come together at the margins of the famous trade route. 2014 marks the 100th anniversary of the Panama Canal. Beyond the Big Ditch calls us to consider how infrastructures are materially embedded in place, producing environments with winners and losers.

Marking the beginning of the third century of the New York State Canal System, the Reimagine the Canals Task Force was convened in May of 2019 by Governor Andrew Cuomo to determine how this historic infrastructure asset can be mobilized anew to promote the health and well-being of upstate New York’s communities, economies, and ecosystems. This panel, comprised of community leaders and experts in canal-related fields, worked over the ensuing six months to review studies and analyses that addressed a wide array of challenges and opportunities and to develop its own set of findings. This report outlines the panel’s work.