The Globalization of Large Dams: The United States, the Third World, and the Geopolitics of Development in Asia and Africa.

在冷战时期的大部分时间里，美国著名的水坝建设机构都在宣传这样一种理念：对所谓的第三世界国家来说，流域规划和大型水电大坝的建设是开发水资源的最有效方式。在美国国务院的指导下，作为向“欠发达”地区提供对外援助和技术转让的广泛计划的一部分，大型水坝和流域规划也成为冷战时期美国地缘政治议程的重要组成部分。对于二战后美国外交政策的制定者来说，通过流域开发转移技术和发展专长是巩固美国国家安全利益与亚洲、中东和非洲新独立国家之间地缘政治联盟的重要组成部分，目的是建立一道堡垒，抵御美国官员所认为的共产主义的全球扩张。本研究调查了20世纪中后期在第三世界规划和建造的众多看似孤立的项目是如何受到美国历届政府的启发的，在许多情况下，美国杰出的水坝建设机构——美国内政部垦务局（USBR）、美国陆军工程兵团和田纳西河谷管理局（TVA）——的积极推动。研究者将在美国进行档案研究，并选择一些地区（如湄公河流域）来检查和分析：大型水坝技术和流域规划概念在20世纪中期在整个第三世界传播的地理范围。该研究还将分析工具——地缘政治、技术和话语——通过这些工具，大型水坝和流域规划的扩散得到了规划和实施。除了确定美国水资源开发机构国际活动的地理范围外，亚洲和非洲流域方法的案例研究将调查这些地区和河流中人类和非人类行为者对大型水坝和流域规划的全球循环的历史和地理特定反应。这个项目将扩大我们对水资源基础设施全球化及其与冷战期间美国全球地缘政治意识形态和战略的联系的理解。在一个层面上，这项研究将为人类干预自然系统最深远、最重要的方式之一——筑坝——的历史提供一个关键但在很大程度上被掩盖的部分。在另一个层面上，这项研究将有助于更精确地理解关于社会权力、技术知识和生物物理过程之间相互联系的概念辩论。通过强调大型水坝和流域规划方法并不存在于技术真空中，不受其他社会和生物物理力量的影响，该研究将为评估流域发展的持续有效性提供更坚实的历史基础——传统上认为——面对多重经济、政治和环境利益。

Throughout much of the Cold War period, prominent United States dam-building agencies promoted the idea that river basin planning and the construction of large-scale hydroelectric dams were the most effective ways for so-called third-world nations to develop their water resources. Guided by the U.S. State Department as part of a broad program of foreign assistance and technology transfer to regions labeled as "underdeveloped", large dams and river basin planning also became important parts of the United States' geopolitical agenda during the Cold War era. For the architects of foreign policy in the United States in the post-WWII era, the transfer of technological and development expertise via river basin development was an important part of solidifying geopolitical alliances between US national security interests and newly independent states in Asia, the Middle East and Africa in order to establish a bulwark against what U.S. officials perceived as the global expansion of communism. This research investigates how the numerous seemingly isolated projects planned and constructed throughout third-world in the mid- to late-twentieth century were inspired and in many cases actively promoted by successive United States' administrations through the activities of America's preeminent dam-building agencies -- the Department of Interior's Bureau of Reclamation (USBR), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The investigator will conduct archival research in the United States and select regions (e.g., the Mekong River basin) to examine and analyze: the geographical extent of the dissemination of both the technology of large dams and the notion of river basin planning throughout the third world during the middle 20th century. The study will also analyze the tools -- geopolitical, technological and discursive -- through which the diffusion of large dams and river basin planning was planned and carried out. In addition to determining the geographical extent of the international activities of U.S. water resource development agencies, case studies of river basin approaches in Asia and Africa will investigate the historically and geographically specific responses to the global circulation of large dams and river basin planning on the part of both human and nonhuman actors in those regions and rivers targeted for transformation.This project will expand our understanding of the globalization of water resource infrastructure and its links to the global geopolitical ideologies and strategies of the United States during the Cold War. At one level, the study will offer insights into a critical yet largely obscured part of the history of one of the most far-reaching and substantial ways that humans have intervened in natural systems: the damming of rivers. At another level, the research will contribute to a more refined understanding of conceptual debates over the interconnections among social power, technological knowledge and biophysical processes. By emphasizing that large dams and river basin planning approaches do not reside in a technological vacuum, immune from other social and biophysical forces, the research will offer a firmer historical foundation for assessing the continuing efficacy of river basin development -- as traditionally conceived -- in the face of multiple economic, political and environmental interests.