ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the social and political effects of a large dam in the Department of Eastern Pyrénées in southern France. In 1976, the French state constructed a dam near the town of Vinça on the Têt River, altering the hydrological conditions that had co-produced a complex system of hydro-social relations evolved since the Middle Ages. The dam, we argue, was built partly as a means of gaining territorial presence in a region historically resistant to the control of the French state. We show that the dam has had the effect of transferring expertise and social power from local to central authority through the production of hydrological certainty in the form of assured and regular flows. The production of hydrological certainty has contributed to weakening the local social structures and relations that had evolved to accommodate hydrological uncertainty and periodical scarcity.
