ABSTRACT
Water resources have been acknowledged as an important linking theme in Southeast Asian studies, reflected in multiple aspects of society, history, economy and culture (Bray 1994; Boomgaard 2007), leading some commentators to assert that human-water relationships, and not the much better-studied human-land relationships, are a stronger determinant factor in the region (Rigg 1992). Water and its control have been identified as a subject of research and theorization throughout the twentieth century, from every day, localized forms of contestation right up to overarching theories providing the basis for sociological explanations for differential types of state formation. An oft-cited example has been Karl Wittfogel’s (1957) twin concepts of ‘hydraulic society’ and ‘Oriental despotism’, which were in part, a critical response to and elaboration of Marx’s historical materialism notion of an ‘Asiatic mode of production’. Simultaneously, a debate has simmered for decades regarding the compatibility of Wittfogel’s hydraulic society concept to the early political formation and development paradigm of South and Southeast Asian nations, which has been most vibrant in the case of Bali (e.g. Geertz 1959; Hunt et al. 1976; Geertz 1981; Lansing 1991; Christie 1992; Schoenfelder 2004; Lansing et al. 2005; Nordholt 2011) and to a lesser extent, Java (e.g. Bray 1994; Christie 1992) and Sri Lanka (e.g. Leach 1959, 1980; Goldsmith and Hildyard 1984).
