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Presentation short abstract

Irrigation water shapes harvests, debt and survival in Kurdistan’s Mardin–Kızıltepe–Nusaybin Plains. Seeing water as a lived, relational substance, the study shows how state and subaltern infrastructures intersect. A socio-material bricolage approach reveals mechanisms structuring access.

Presentation long abstract

Irrigation water decides harvests, debt and survival for smallholder farmers, and is inseparable from the infrastructures and institutions that move it. Smallholder farmers produce a large share of global food but face growing difficulties in securing reliable and fair access to water, especially in contested state settings. The Mardin, Kızıltepe and Nusaybin Plains of northern Kurdistan are cases in point: megaprojects built and managed by the Turkish state have curtailed surface-water access, while farmers have assembled groundwater infrastructures, often beyond or beside formal regulation. The research approaches water through local Kurdish and regional understandings that treat water as a lived, relational substance rather than a neutral resource. This non-Western lens highlights how material flows of water are entangled with histories of dispossession, care and obligation, shaping what forms of access and use become possible. This research examines how intersections between state and subaltern infrastructural practices shape access to irrigation water under contested conditions of state power. It uses socio-material bricolage to identify three mechanisms—aggregation, alteration and articulation—through which actors, infrastructures and institutions co-shape access, moving beyond a simple control-versus-resistance binary. Empirically, the research combines long-term ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews and co-design labs with farmers to show how power, inequality and survival are negotiated through water infrastructures in a conflict-affected, climate-stressed region.