Paper short abstract:

Contemporary Chinese popular mobilisations on common water sources reveals how alternative futures can be actively encapsulated into the iconic infrastructures of the past. In Yunnan, the materiality of infrastructures mediates the mobilisation of the imaginary on present day struggles on water.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I will dwell on the trope of "leaking" and draw from the anthropology of infrastructure to explore the ways in which the surviving water structures of the mass campaigns of Maoist water development play into contemporary popular mobilisation on water use and distribution and the formulation of imaginary blueprints for water-rich futures in water-poor and dispossesed rural Yunnan, People's Republic of China. Here, efforts to distribute water equitably are currently being undermined by increasing socio-economic pressures and environmental degradation. Under the present predicaments, local cadres and residents are compelled to re-envision local histories of collective water control and their potential for alternative water-mediated human relations. In so doing, they conceive alternative ways to collaborate that might secure water access for all in the future.

In Yancong, the Yunnanese Township site of my fieldwork, remnants of the Maoist past are seen as laying behind the concrete walls of the collectively-built water structures of the past. Similarly to water, these narrativised rearticulations of collectively meaningful past events may "leak away" from regimented schemes of appropriation and use to later become available to water users in unexpected, cooperative or antagonistic forms.To keep the water supply accessible in the locale, the people of Yancong draw on specific local histories of moral conduct and collective achievements; my contribution will thus show how historically and materially inflected views of collective agency are recuperated as solution to the present-day predicaments of water shortage.