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| ISBN-13: | 9781478007043 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 09/13/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 15 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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CHAPTER 1
Constructing a Renaissance Hydropower and the Temporal Politics of Development
What does hydropower have to do with renaissance, rebirth, and reawakening? The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) represents a new start for many Ethiopians who feel that their nation has slumbered for too long. The $5 billion GERD is easily Ethiopia's largest hydroelectric project, but it is part of a much wider national boom in dam construction that began in the twenty-first century. From the years 2000 to 2015, Ethiopia increased tenfold its capacity to generate hydropower — a key component of the state's strategy to become a middle-income country by 2025.
In connecting hydropower with renaissance, the Ethiopian state is telling a story about the past and the future. Ethiopians are well aware of their nation's past glories — the magnificent stelae of Axumite civilization, the rock-hewn churches of Lalibella, and the defeat of the Italians in the Battle of Adwa. Then many years of stagnation and decline, with the nation perhaps reaching its lowest point in the 1980s when Ethiopia became not an emblem of African independence, but a global symbol for poverty, famine, and international aid. A renaissance is something that many Ethiopians have desired for decades. In contrast to Africa Rising narratives, a renaissance clearly brings something new but also captures the glories of the past. Renaissance excites the imaginations of Ethiopians and international funders, and support from both is absolutely necessary for constructing large dams.
International scholars and anti-dam activists have specifically attacked this narrative of renaissance through hydropower. It is in this battle over renaissance, narrative, and dams that the intrinsic instability of the construction process emerges. Dams are monumental infrastructures that require billions of dollars to build, funds that come primarily from international lenders. Critics of dams ask whose past, whose renaissance, and whose future do dams support? Ethiopian leaders referenced the example of the Hoover Dam and economic growth in the US, arguing that the GERD will be their Hoover and promote rapid modernization (Tadesse 2013). In contrast, International Rivers (IR), an NGO based in Berkeley, California, is devoted to preventing the construction of large dams in the global south and has been particularly vocal in opposing dams in Ethiopia. Lori Pottinger (2013), an IR employee, explicitly drew on the Hoover/GERDcomparison as a point of critique: "The Hoover Dam was built in a time when we didn't fully understand the dire consequences of damming off major rivers. Today we do, and large dams such as Hoover would never be built in the US today. In fact, we're taking down dams to help restore rivers and the communities they support. The megadam model is a dinosaur. Ethiopia would be better off leapfrogging over it to a more modern and efficient system, and find less provocative ways to assert its interests over the Nile waters."
In other words, the engine for generating Ethiopian renaissance and modernization is "a dinosaur." IRessentially flips the script, placing dams in the past and rejecting the association between big dams and a desirable future. IR's counternarrative drew harsh critiques from the Ethiopian government that reveal the importance of the technology/modernity relationship for the developmental state.
At one level, Ethiopian state discourse draws on mid-twentieth-century modernization theory to argue that big dams are technical solutions to the problem of poverty. However, this is not simply a case of the state adopting outdated models of development. As I explain in the first half of the chapter, government leaders argue that state-led technological interventions are an alternative to dominant modes of twenty-first-century development that assume that downsizing the state brings economic growth. The Ethiopian developmental state invests in large-scale infrastructure projects to promote development. Opposing this perspective is an argument rooted in anthropological critiques of development that interprets technological interventions as a mask for underdevelopment. From this perspective, depoliticized technical interventions distract attention from inequality and a need to redistribute resources. I connect this critique with a reading of Ethiopian history in which the center benefits at the expense of the periphery. Both of these perspectives evaluate big dams in terms of their implications for economic development and inequality, but whereas the first perspective understands modernization as benefitting the nation as a whole, the second claims that technologies such as dams benefit a few people at the expense of many. Distinct narratives about the relationship between the past, present, and future shape the legitimacy of construction. For critics of Ethiopia's dams, a history of center/periphery exploitation raises questions about the desirability of a renaissance.
In the second half of this chapter I explore what dams mean for their opponents and proponents in terms of conceptions of the future and ideologies of development. Each of the forms of infrastructure that I examine in this book has important symbolic dimensions, but dams are particularly potent in their power to generate emotional attachments. For both their proponents and opponents, dams signify particular ideologies of development and ways of moving through time. For the Ethiopian state, dams are singular technologies that can drive economic growth, and it is precisely this belief that attracts criticism from organizations such as International Rivers. Emotional attachments to particular imagined futures and modes of experiencing change over time are at the heart of debates between the Ethiopian state and IR. I argue that the symbolic temporalities of big dams are intertwined with the spatial dynamics of development and underdevelopment. International Rivers and the Ethiopian government each used spatial arguments to undermine the other's position. Their respective temporal narratives were rooted in particular conceptions of the nation and spatial relations of inequality. In contrast to the technologies of development that I discuss in other chapters, critiques of dams have come primarily from outside Ethiopia. This is partially because those who are negatively affected by dams already exist on the margins of power, making national identity a particularly salient issue in debates over dams. Dams are so contentious because they represent different conceptions of the passage of time and they concretely manifest contrasting spatial distributions of power and resources. It is these competing temporal and spatial narratives that often destabilize the construction of dams.
Dams and the Developmental State: Technical Solutions for Eradicating Poverty
The construction of large dams as a development strategy in Ethiopia is a distinctive characteristic of the current regime. When the EPRDF came to power in the early 1990s, Ethiopia had only four major dams that together generated less than 250 megawatts of power. In the early 2000s, the Ethiopian government began building more dams. The first of these, Gibe I, is located near one of my research sites, Jimma. The construction of Gibe I was funded by the World Bank and cost around $330 million. When it came on line in 2004, Gibe I generated 180 megawatts of power, increasing Ethiopia's total supply of hydropower by nearly 75 percent. However, Gibe I would be dwarfed by the megadams that soon followed. By 2016 Ethiopia had finished construction on ten new dams that generated an additional 1600 megawatts of electricity. The two dams that I focus on in this chapter are scheduled to generate 1,870 megawatts (Gibe III) and 6,000 megawatts (GERD). Gibe III dams the Omo River in southern Ethiopia and the GERD dams the Blue Nile River, near the Ethiopia–Sudan border. These projects have generated a great deal of controversy, and as a result many multilateral funding organizations have withdrawn their support, forcing the Ethiopian government to rely on internal funding through the sale of bonds and loans from state-owned Chinese banks. An Italian company, Salini Impregilo, is constructing both these projects. If successful, Gibe III and the GERD would generate enough power to make electricity Ethiopia's top export, replacing agricultural products such as coffee, khat, and oilseeds. In areas with functional electric grids, hydropower will provide electricity for businesses, schools, hospitals, and private residences. The Gibe III dam will also support irrigation for large-scale plantations, and therefore its impacts may extend even farther than those of the larger GERD.
Achieving economic growth through investment in hydropower is a strategy that was widely deployed internationally during the mid-twentieth century, and it fits well with classic modernization theory. From New Deal projects in the United States to postcolonial nation building in the global south, national leaders sought to use dams to generate the energy necessary to fuel growth (Ekbladh 2010). Dams facilitate the stage of growth that W. W. Rostow (1960) labeled the "take-off," providing the energy and distribution of water to support advances in agriculture and industry. At first glance it seems that Ethiopia is simply adopting a development strategy from the past and applying it to the present. Given that modernization theory and dam construction have been heavily critiqued, it is legitimate to ask why Ethiopia has adopted such a dated strategy.
Although the Ethiopian state has historically sought to achieve development through high modernist planning and investments in technology (Fantini and Puddu 2016), big dams are not an anachronism. Ethiopia's twenty-first-century dam boom is supported by a specific political ideology that is directly opposed to the downsizing that many African governments experienced at the end of the twentieth century. The dam boom is also connected to the emergence of a strong relationship between Ethiopia and China, particularly in the aftermath of Ethiopia's contentious 2005 election. Investment in infrastructure as a means of attaining economic development is a lesson learned directly from the successful Chinese example (Fourie 2015, 306). Like China (Tilt 2015), Ethiopia is increasingly a nation led by engineers who are confident in their ability to transform the environment in ways that support development. In this sense Ethiopia is an example of what Walter Mignolo calls "de-Westernization," a process in which states reject Western models of economic growth and their associated human rights discourses (2011, 182–83). De-Westernization is, however, like Westernization in that it maintains a "type of economy in which life is subservient to economic growth and political power" (Mignolo 2011, 183).
Constructing large dams is central to the broader political economic philosophy that guides the Ethiopian state's development interventions. Meles Zenawi led the resistance fighters who overthrew the Marxist Derg regime in 1991. He became Ethiopia's first prime minister during the EPRDF era, and he ruled until he passed away in 2012. Meles was not only the face of the EPRDF; he provided much of the intellectual energy for the government's policies. Meles articulated some of his ideas concerning development in a chapter titled "States and Markets: Neoliberal Limitations and the Case for a Developmental State," published in 2011 in an edited volume on good growth and governance in Africa. The chapter is specifically concerned with political and economic techniques for bringing about an "African renaissance." Although scholars of Ethiopia have debated the degree to which Meles's ideas were actually put into practice (De Waal 2013; Lefort 2013), it is clear that heavy investment in big dams by the state coheres with his broader vision of political economy.
Meles was highly critical of what he called the neoliberal paradigm in which "the smaller the role of the state, the better" (2011b, 140). He argued that neoliberal political economy is based in rational choice theory, in which all individuals are independent, self-interested actors. Neoliberal theory falters if the necessity of collaboration and cooperation is acknowledged. Meles explains: "If rational choice theory is wrong and people are not solely self-interested maximizers, the question of whether the state should be a nightwatchman state or not would become an empirical rather than a theoretical question" (2011a, 144). Meles uses the term nightwatchman state to reference the minimal role of the state within neoliberal theory and the neoliberal belief that decision making should be left to markets populated by self-interested individuals. Meles suggests that once assumptions regarding rational choice theory are thrown out and other motivations for human behavior are acknowledged, the neoliberal model of the nightwatchman state must be reassessed on the basis of how it actually functions in practice.
Despite this critique, Meles draws a key insight from the neoliberal paradigm that the only source of continued increase in per capita income is technological change (2011b, 149). However, Meles points out that neoliberal models do not actually explain how technological change will occur. The neoliberal assumption that it will occur naturally as a result of market incentives and relations between developed and undeveloped nations has not played out in practice. Meles argues that because technology is a public good, the market alone cannot be relied on for innovation and provision. There is no incentive for the market to introduce technologies that have public value but are not directly profitable. Therefore, governments must take the lead in introducing technologies that support development and the public good (2011b, 149–51).
For Meles, big dams are just such a technology. They provide electricity, irrigation, and flood control. In the Ethiopian case, much of the electricity generated will be exported rather than used domestically. The revenues gained from the export of electricity will be invested in public projects, a process that would be impossible if the introduction of hydropower technology was left to private companies. Of course, questions remain regarding the state's ability to select appropriate technological interventions that will advance public interests. Given the critiques made by activist organizations such as International Rivers, why should one assume that the state will advance the public good? Meles argues that, first, the developmental state must be autonomous from the private sector. It is only through this autonomy that the developmental state is able to discipline the private sector and support activities that are in the public interest. Second, "the development agenda must be hegemonic if successful development is to take place and if a developmental state is to be established" (2011a, 168). When the development agenda is hegemonic, millions of people willingly act in the interests of development. Meles is clear that while the developmental state's actions must reflect a national consensus, the state need not be a democracy. Meles explains that "the developmental state, however, has the motivation [to promote growth-enhancing activities] because its purpose is to accelerate growth and it can do so — and maintain its legitimacy — only by rewarding growth-enhancing activities and restricting and penalizing socially wasteful activities" (169). In other words, the developmental state must act in the interests of the public, because this is the only way it can maintain its legitimacy.
Meles's argument here is circular: the developmental state promotes growth because this is the purpose of the developmental state; the developmental state has legitimacy because it must be legitimate to promote growth. Rather than critique Meles's use of logic, my interest is in understanding how his political-economic ideology supports the construction of big dams. Meles's theory of the developmental state becomes a sort of faith. Development must occur because that is what a developmental state does. Problems regarding the use of public funds to hire private companies to build dams of questionable economic value are erased. The decisions of a developmental state cannot be questioned unless one questions the alleviation of poverty more broadly. Gibe III and the GERD must be in the interest of the public because supporting the public good is implicit in the definition of a developmental state.
This is a logic that occasionally occurs during casual discussions of dam building among urban Ethiopians. I was surprised to hear friends who were normally very cynical regarding state-led development argue that the GERD would be successful. They claimed that the EPRDF had failed in its previous political and economic initiatives and had staked everything on successfully completing this massive dam project. If the GERD fails, then the EPRDF will also fail, and this seemed to be inconceivable. Again, this is teleological: For a developmental state to exist, the development agenda must be hegemonic. For the development agenda to be hegemonic, the state must succeed in implementing growth- enhancing projects. Therefore the presence of a developmental state necessarily implies the success of growth-enhancing projects.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ixIntroduction. Foundations for Development: Infrastructure, the State, and Construction 1
1. Constructing a Renaissance: Hydropower and the Temporal Politics of Development 29
2. Asphalt Roads, Regulating Infrastructures, and Improvised Lives 58
3. Feeling Change through Dirt and Water: The Affective Politics of Urban Development of Jimma, 2009–2015 92
4. Governing the Bajaj: States, Markets, and Multiple Materialisms 121
5. What Can a Stone Do? Cobblestone Roads, Governance, and Labor 151
Conclusion. The Time of Construction 181
Notes 193
References 203
Index 217
What People are Saying About This
“Under Construction stages urgent interventions into development and governance, citizen and state, Afro-optimism and neoliberal pessimism in order to depict the complexities of infrastructure in Africa. Daniel Mains's work makes clear that the relationships between infrastructure, state, labor, and modernity are variable and contingent—sometimes smooth, often sticky and fraught—while making a compelling case for Ethiopia as a rich site for theoretical and ethnographic attention.”
“Based on years of ethnographic research, Under Construction is a magnificent and thorough exposition that describes the ambivalence and hope invested in construction projects in Ethiopia. Construction, Daniel Mains demonstrates, is a vital location at which relationships between states and citizens are grounded. While they are powerful gatherings of technology and finance, construction projects are also precarious and full of danger. In exploring the tensions that are intrinsic to construction projects, Mains effortlessly brings together theorizations of historical materialism, vital materialism, and affect theory to produce a dazzling and clear account of how construction is incrementally and yet fundamentally transforming the political landscape of cities of the global South.”