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Spring-based irrigation in Battir, Palestine: A locus of social agency in the face of hydro-hegemony

Kholoud D. Nasser
Birzeit University, Ramallah, Palestine; kholoud.nasser3@gmail.com

ABSTRACT: This article discusses the agricultural use of springs as a socio-ecological and everyday matter in the context of structural colonial control over water. It examines how Israel’s strategies interfere with the local politics around water. It also investigates how rural communities collectively deploy agency through implementing traditional spring-based irrigation as a 'common' system, and also through ecotourism as a way of building solidarity. As a case study, the article focuses on the village of Battir, which is located on the western edge of the West Bank highlands. The paper utilises ethnographic and qualitative tools for data collection. From an interdisciplinary perspective, the study tries to bridge the theoretical and empirical approaches of water research. It brings insights from political ecology into conversation with social theories of practice. Its aim is to analyse how people exert agency and navigate their actions while immersed in a struggle to define their lives according to their needs. The analysis takes place in the context of the settler colonial condition. The article underlines the role of local practices in water resource management as a counter-hegemonic act in the face of colonial expansion and hydro-hegemony and as a bottom-up approach to enhancing local development, bringing stability to the social field, and strengthening resilience.

KEYWORDS: Hydro-hegemony, irrigation commons, agency, somoud, settler colonialism, Palestinian highlands, springs, Palestine