ABSTRACT

The centrality of water as a source of power and meaning within the narrative of human history can be traced through all societies, where water was and is understood as an essential resource underpinning existence. Interestingly, this enduring narrative suggests a stability and constancy that EHOLHV WKH FRQWLQXDO HEEV DQG ÀRZV WKDW FKDUDFWHULVH ZDWHU¶V DYDLODELOLW\ 6WUDQJ7KURXJKWKHVKLIWVZKLFKDFFRPSDQ\ERWKWKHGHYHORSPHQWV of nature and of policy, our relationship with water similarly changes, understood over time as alternately a taken-for-granted resource, a lifeline, and a commodity, just to name a few. Water is also often used as a metaphor for time, forming the central subject matter for many songs and poems in ZKLFKZDWHUPDUNVWKHFRQWLQXDOÀRZLQJRIOLIH6WUDQJ7XDQ

In this chapter, we aim to examine how the relationship between water and place-making shifts over time by tracing the narratives of meaning and emotion expressed by participants in relation to the two sites of study. Through the examination of these communities, we begin to understand the central importance of water as an aspect of place-making within both these particular sites of irrigation, and more broadly, any community where the availability or otherwise of this resource forms a historic and continuing structuring narrative. Thus, here, memory is centralised as the process by which water, and by extension, community, are given meaning over time. This chapter also theorises memory as a material process, simultaneously VLWXDWHG LQDQGE\ WKHFRPPXQLWLHV LQZKLFK LW LV HQDFWHG +RHOVFKHUDQG $OGHUPDQ7KXVZHH[DPLQHKRZPHPRU\PD\EHXVHGDVDIRUP of place-making within irrigation communities, tracing the historical developments of knowledges, emotions and meanings around water, including changes in its purpose and availability. In this way, the chapter unpacks how narratives of water are contested, reconstituted and shift VLJQL¿FDQWO\ WR LQIRUP PHDQLQJV RI SODFH DQG FRPPXQLW\ RYHU WLPH particularly during times of drought.