Paper short abstract:

Drawing on Wittfogel's analysis of connections between politics, religion, and water resource management, I will consider how multiple discourses of 'purity' contest moral authority over water as a natural resource. My case study is religious and secular ritual uses of water in Akosombo, Ghana.

Paper long abstract:

In his work Oriental Despotism, Wittfogel observed the link between human political control, water resource management, and religion whereby "the position, fate, and prestige of the secular masters of hydraulic society were closely interlinked with that of their divine protectors…to confirm and bulwark their own legitimacy" (1957: 40). Drawing on the hydro symbol of water as purity and by extension morality, as articulated through religious (traditional and Christian) and secular ritual uses of fresh water, I will consider how multiple purity discourses contest moral authority over water as a natural resource. I will also consider whether and how ritual uses of water correspondingly shape social identity. My ethnographic case study is Akosombo, Ghana.

Riding on the wave of post-independence fervour, President Kwame Nkrumah's vision for national industrial development was realised through the construction of Ghana's largest hydro-electric project, known as the Akosombo dam. The dam created Lake Volta and resulted in a government-led forced resettlement of 78,000 people from 700 inundated settlements that vastly altered local human relationships to their fresh water environment. While the dam promises national and even transnational energy provision, the state-controlled hydro-power industry, and increased internal migration for livelihood opportunities, have threatened to reshape customary landholding arrangements and human-environment relations as stipulated by Akosombo's local pre-dam Akwamu population. In this paper, I will consider how water as framed in purity discourse can become commodified for profit, and ask how localised ritual actions can interrogate overarching national environmental freshwater management frameworks.