Paper short abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork following flooding in Thailand, this paper examines how scale-making practices become politically relevant in Thai social and material ecologies of water. I demonstrate that scales are discursive strategies for water governance with consequences for our hydrological futures.

Paper long abstract:

As water crises and water demands intensify, water has become a central concern for governance at local, regional, national, and international scales. While water and water crises are multi-scalar, the scales through which we understand water's value are naturalized, giving only particular kinds of responses to water crises leverage and legitimacy. Drawing on fieldwork following unprecedented flooding in Thailand, this paper examines how scale-making practices become politically relevant in Thai social and material ecologies of water. In 2011, unexpected rainfalls caused flooding across much of Thailand and mobilized forms of technological, scientific, and political expertise to legislate recovery measures and simultaneously constitute Thailand's rivers at varied scales. Specifically, the state agenda proposes dams to rationalize water at the scale of the entire Chao Phraya basin while situated communities counter with smaller, local-scale initiatives to manage floods and droughts with less disruption to social and ecological systems. Tensions rise from these different designs on water, reinforcing asymmetrical power relations and reifying incommensurable scales for understanding and engaging Thai waterscapes. Tracing the social and material conditions of these scale-making projects, this paper queries how varied scales are produced through water governance and how these scales broadly impact hydrological political ecologies. Contributing to a growing discourse that analyzes scale as both political and a process rather than a set of natural, objective spatial relations, I argue that scales are discursive strategies for water governance with substantive consequences on human relations with water and our hydrological futures.