Cutting the Mass Line

Water, Politics, and Climate in Southwest China

Andrea E. Pia

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English

Johns Hopkins University Press
04 June 2024

Politics & government; Development economics; Water purification & desalinization

Series: Water and Society

Explores the growing water supply crisis through an ethnographic study of a rural minority community in China threatened by climate change.

China is experiencing climate whiplash—extreme fluctuations between drought and flooding—that threatens the health and autonomy of millions of people. Set against mounting anxiety over the future of global water supplies, Cutting the Mass Line explores the enduring political, technical, and ethical project of making water available to human communities and ecosystems in a time of drought, infrastructural disrepair, and environmental breakdown.

Anthropologist Andrea E. Pia explores essential questions of how to manage water resources from the vantage point of Huize County, a water-challenged, ecologically damaged, multi-ethnic area in rural Yunnan Province. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, archival materials, and statistical data, Pia brings readers inside the inner workings of China's complex water supply ecosystem by exploring the intricate relationships among Chinese water services agencies; water user associations; dam construction sites; party cadres and rural entrepreneurs, mediators, and farmers; and foreign development planners.

The climate crisis and the global politics of sustainability and mitigation offer unanticipated leeway for experimental grassroots intrusions in what has traditionally been the sphere of elite regulatory action: water allocation and distribution. Rural residents' efforts to keep access to local water sources and flourish in their own communities are moving the political possibilities of climate and environmental collective action in exciting and unforeseen directions. As the world grapples with challenges to water quality, supply, and control, the impacts of China's resource management strategies will be a provocative and useful study for the future.

By: Andrea E. Pia
Imprint: Johns Hopkins University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 476g
ISBN: 9781421448848
ISBN 10: 142144884X
Series: Water and Society
Pages: 344
Publication Date: 04 June 2024
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Andrea E. Pia (LONDON, UK) is an assistant professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is the author of The Long Day of Young Peng and a coeditor of the journal Made in China.