ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the renegotiation of the friction of an irrigation canal transforms the relative gender, racial and class positions of its users. To trace how changing canal friction is formed by and shaping race, gender and class differences, it analyses how Talia’s position in the Gezira is dynamically associated with the canal from which she is irrigating. The chapter shows both how colonial practices of mapping, distribution and intensification were used to concentrate land, water and labour for cotton extraction and how colonial orderings were gradually undermined. It focuses on a series of policy documents on irrigation reforms and interviews with people who took part in implementing these reforms to understand how Irrigation Management Transfer was mobilized to re-establish control over the Gezira’s water use(r)s and its irrigation, tenant and worker organisations and enabled a new round of extraction of water.
