Course: Contested Natural Resources, Rural Livelihoods, and Globalization
Essay No: 1
Seminar Tutor: Peter Mollinga
Essay Title:
For water management in Bali, discuss how ‘scientific
knowledge’ and ‘local knowledge’ play a role in globalizationlocalization dynamics, and whether this distinction of knowledge
types makes sense.
Submission Date: 23 / April / 2012
Word Count: 2940
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This paper will look at the distinct system of water management for rice paddy
irrigation in Bali, focusing on the repercussions of the Green Revolution. Using the
work of Stephen Lansing it will illustrate how for hundreds of years there has been an
intricate network of water temples that have created a water management system that
works at optimal levels to ensure pest control and water sharing. There are rice paddies
all along the stream of the rivers that flow from the crater of the Lake Batur so temples
need to guarantee that both upstream and downstream fields have enough water for at
least two cropping cycles. Also Balinese water management serves the dual function of
coordinating paddy flooding and fallow periods as a pest control system, as well as
avoiding too much water stress on the system by preventing peeks in the demand,
through a very complex sociotechnical system. However when the Green Revolution
methods of continuous rice cropping of hybrid rice crops, pesticide, and irrigation took
place their engineers did not take the water temple network into account, and thus were
soon faced problems such as water shortage, pest infestations and pollution. This paper
will argue that the Green Revolution failed because the water temple system was
invisible to the Indonesian state officials, in part due to the latent ideas of different
statuses in the hierarchy of knowledge whereupon ‘traditional’ knowledge is considered
inferior to ‘scientific knowledge’. The Balinese water management temple system
shows that this hierarchy is not only untrue (traditional systems can be more complex
and efficient than scientific knowledge) it also shows that such latent ideas can have
devastating effects (in this case the continuation of policies that created pollution and
pest infestations). Furthermore the attempts to manage irrigation in Bali also illustrate
the power interplay between the globalization-localization dynamics as external forces
try to direct the system to gain the ensuing power that such control entails.
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As Stirrat emphasizes in his study of short-term development consultant work,
there is an underlying ‘culture of modernity’ in the development profession which
influences how development workers both see the world and subsequently try to change
it (Stirrat, 2000: 35-7). This ‘culture of modernity’ implies a particular worldview based
on objectivity and rationality, which entails the idea that there is an “objectively
knowable world” consisting on empirically verifiable facts and universal categories
(ibid: 35,6). Modernism and these ideas of universal categories known through
objective truths therefore imply that there is a hierarchy of knowledge, where scientific,
highly technological, and objective knowledge (sometimes described as ‘western’
knowledge) is at the top while tradition or indigenous knowledge is culture bound and
therefore inferior, it “is denigrated by being portrayed as less than technical” (Crewe
and Harrison, 1998: 92). And not only is the former superior to the latter, there is also a
‘unilinear progression’ from simple technology to modern scientific technology
(Pfaffenberger, 1992). Marx and Engels for instance both believed that modern
technology was a precondition for human emancipation and social progress (Benton,
1989: 53).
This ideology was very visible in the development practices of the second half of
the twentieth century (for instance through the Structural Adjustment Programs) where
it was believed that by sharing the scientific knowledge from the ‘west’ to the rest
poorer countries would get developed. And it therefore followed that global problems
could be solved through technical solutions such as the ‘Green Revolution’ which was
believed to be able to resolve world hunger. Today such deterministic “techno-fix”
approaches to technology-transfer solutions have been largely discredited as can be seen
by the increase in development projects that include social scientists in their planning
and implementation processes (Crewe and Harrison: 110).
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The idea of hierarchy of knowledge is no longer explicitly visible mainly because
the “more simplistic ideas of modernization theory have been discarded” yet it still
latently remains in the mainstream development paradigm (Stirrat: 38,9). ‘Indigenous
knowledge’ is now incorporated in many development plans (for instance through the
use of participatory rural appraisal), however, as Stirrat argues “indigenous knowledge
is only recognized as knowledge when it fits the models of modernity” when this is not
the case then it is either “consigned to the dustbin of ‘culture’ or even ‘superstition’”
(Ibid).
This interplay between different types of knowledge and the underlying beliefs of
development planners in a hierarchy of knowledge is clearly visible in the case of the
Indonesian island, Bali, and the changes in its water management practices from the
1960s onwards with the ‘Green Revolution’. The Indonesian government adopted new
rice-growing technologies (new hybrid high yield rice varieties that needed chemical
pesticides and fertilizers) in an attempt to change the state’s dependence on rice imports
and to move towards the production of cash crops (Lansing, 1991:111). The mentality
behind the Green Revolution reflects the previously mentioned ideas of modernism and
‘techno-fix’ methods as can be seen by Lansing’s description: “The Green Revolution
approach assumed that agriculture was a purely technical process and that production
would be optimized if everyone planted high-yielding varieties of rice as often as they
could” (Lansing, 1991: 117), leaving no fallow time in between crops. Also the Green
Revolution took power away from the Balinese water temples precisely because they
were considered traditional and thus backwards (Lansing, 1987: 339). However the
results of such changes were devastating for the Balinese rice crops: “the incidence of
bacterial and viral diseases, together with insect and rat populations, began to increase
rapidly. Imported organochloride pesticides made some dents in the rising pest
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populations, but also killed off eels, fish, and in some cases farmers in the rice fields”
(Lansing, 1987: 339).
The reason why the Green Revolution did not succeed in this particular case1 is
due to the incapacity of the Green Revolution planners to notice the existing water
management system organized by the water temples as well as their failure to
understand the complexity that links water sharing and pest control.
Lansing shows that water temple networks in Bali constituted a very old and
complex sociotechnical system2 of water management. Water temples manage irrigation
by organizing the cooperation of different subaks (farmers associations) while balancing
of “two opposing constrains: water sharing and pest control” (Lansing and Kremer,
1993: 102).
As there are no storage dams in the rivers nor irrigation tanks Balinese rice paddy
fields function through an irrigation system that is dependent on seasonal flow of rivers
influenced by rainfall. This system has to be coordinated to assure that both upstream
and downstream fields have enough access to water and can cope with the conditions of
the different rainy seasons from flash floods to a trickle of water (Lansing, 1991: 38).
Lansing shows how the use of wet and dry phases of rice paddies through irrigation
control helps increase the fertility of the land by governing the “basic-biochemestry of
the paddy ecosystem” which explains the long-term productivity of the Balinese rice
cultivation system (Ibid: 42). Water maintains the fertility of the land as it alters the
soil’s pH and provides soil with nutrients; it affects the activity of microorganisms,
algae and weeds and even stabilizes the temperature of the soil (Lansing, 1987: 327).
The water management system therefore is not simply in place to supplement rainfall
1
This paper will not look at the general criticism of the Green Revolution, as it is another topic all
together typically associated with increasing social polarization (Bardini, 1994: 154)
2
A science and technology studies (STS) concept that accepts the “sociality of human technological
activity” (Pfaffenberger: 493)
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with irrigation but rather has a more complex function of “managing the regional terrace
ecosystem” (Lansing, 1987: 338).
Furthermore another fundamental part of the water management system is related
to pest control, through the coordination of fallow periods. If the area that is left fallow
is large enough and is left this way long enough it deprives the pests of their habitat and
food and therefore naturally exterminates them. Yet for this to work it requires the
cooperation of all farmers in the surrounding area; because if even a single farmer does
not coordinate his fallow period, pests can simply find refuge in his fields. However if
all farmers were to synchronize their cropping seasons then there would be a peak
irrigation demand and there would not be enough water for everyone (Lansing and
Kremer, 1993: 100).
Further factors to be considered when coordinating the irrigation system is the
exact timing of cultivation, which depend on the end of the rainy season. Using Georges
Condomina’s concept of ‘ritual technology’ whereupon agriculture is “a social as well
as a technical process, which is structured by the sequences of agricultural rites”
(Lansing, 1991: 6) Lansing shows how the ‘Temple Festival of the Tenth Month’ is in
reality a system that sets the calendar for each year indicating when farmers should start
planting their first crop (Lansing 1987: 330). Each year the priests of the master water
temple Pura Ulun Danu Batur sent hand written invitations to all the main subaks of
their congregation, indicating when the festival will be held. Balinese use a combination
of two different calendars, an Indian Icaka luni-solar calendar and a 210-day (30 7-day
weeks) called uku, simultaneously (Lansing, 1987: 331). Calculating the end of the
rainy season is therefore a complicated task, thus the need for a yearly festival to
indicate when the end of the rainy season is expected and consequently when farmers
should start their first crop.
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All of these factors create a very complex system that needs to be considered
when looking at water management in Bali. A system that is in place through the careful
management of the network of water temples that links the different subaks together,
and which the planners of the Green Revolution failed to see.
The planners of the Green Revolution not only overlooked the water temple
system completely they did not even take into consideration the coordinated fallow time
as a method of pest control because they did not even know such system existed, or was
capable of existing: “Studies of traditional Asian systems of wet-rice cultivation
assumed that pest control was beyond the capabilities of traditional farmers until the
advent of chemical pesticides” (Lansing, 1991: 40). This assumption that pest control
was beyond the capabilities of ‘traditional farmers’ illustrates the idea that ‘traditional’
technology is inferior to ‘modern’ science in the scale of knowledge hierarchy. Not only
did these underlying assumptions blind researches to the mechanisms of a system that
had worked efficiently during hundreds of years, the scientific and modern solutions
that they proposed instead to manage pest controlled (chemical pesticides) “pervasively
polluted the island’s soil and water resources” (Machbub et al. World Bank report
quoted in Lansing, 1991: 40). These devastating side effects were therefore caused by
what James Scott calls “certain inevitable blind spots and by phenomena that lie outside
its [‘high modernism’] restricted field of vision” (Scott, 1998: 263). Problems that occur
because universal modern ideas and projects often do not take into account the local
conditions under which they will be implemented, ignoring complex cultural, historical,
power relations, and other social factors which more objective sciences like economics
are unable to process.
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In the case of Bali the interplay between scientific and local knowledge and
globalization-localization dynamics is further complicated because of the work of
Stephen Lansing and James Kremer (a systems ecologist).
After realizing the problems with the Green Revolution and the complexity of the
water temple irrigation management networks, Lansing (1991: 115,6) wrote several
written reports to the officials of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), who were in
charge of the Bali Irrigation Project trying, to show that:
[T]he rituals of the water temples were not a template for an outmoded
cultivation system but a system of ecological management with deep historical
roots in Balinese culture. Agriculture was a social as well as technical process,
dependent on the “hydraulic solidarity” achieved by the temple system.
Continuous rice cropping threatened both the ecology of the terraces and the
social infrastructure of production.
However these reports were not taken into account, most likely because of the
latent ideas of the hierarchy of knowledge. Lansing was after all an anthropologist; a
social science that looked at culture and that shied away from universal categories
and objective truths, unlike the economic objective and modern models that the ADB
was following. Furthermore Lansing was arguing that a system that was cultural as
well as technical not only was efficient, it worked better than the ‘modern’ and
‘scientific’ use of chemical pesticides.
Nonetheless after Lansing and Kremer developed a computer simulation model
that showed how the system of water temples managed the irrigation of the rice
paddies and thus illustrated the empirical findings that “self-organizing temple
networks are intrinsically capable of a better job at water management than either
autonomous subaks or centralized hierarchical control” (Lansing and Kremer, 1993:
112) the ADB officials were now willing to listen. Furthermore as is visible in the
documentary The rice goddess and the computer, government officials were
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particularly interested in obtaining these computer models; and while they
understood that the water temple system was a highly technical and efficient water
engineering work, they did not believe that the farmers or priests should have access
to these computers. Once the Indonesian government officials had understood the
importance of water temples they most likely were interested in understanding how it
worked to be able to control it better, because as other scholars have already
highlighted Balinese water management is related to control and power. Karl Marx
for instance suggested that the Balinese kings derived their power from the “power
centralizing effects of hydraulic irrigation” yet this has been disproven (Lansing
1991: 14,5). First Clifford Geertz argued that it was not the kings that controlled
irrigation but rather the individual subaks that had independent control (Ibid).
However as Lansing has shown this is not true either, instead it is the high-level
central water temples system that controls the irrigation, independent from the state.
However in the mindset of the Indonesian government, the possibility of controlling
the water temple system computer simulation program could be beneficial because as
Ferguson (1990) claims it is through the process of making political topics into
technical ones that developers can rule the developing.
Thierry Bardini offers an explanation on this shift in the interest of state
officials on Lansing’s explanations through the use of translation theory. According
to Bardini the success in communicating the complexity of the water temples to state
officials through Lansing and Kramer’s computer model has to do with the “creation
of an integrative forum of communication between previously invisible institutions”
(Bardini: 160). Arguing that the two different management systems were invisible to
each other, Bardini sees Lansing’s model as the space in which their communication
was made possible, as it managed to translate the “traditional way of thinking so as
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to make it understandable within the rationality of western science” (164).
Furthermore he argues that the process of the Green Revolution is a continuous
process of change, and therefore the adaptation of the computer model by officials
could be considered as part of the new technologies of the Green Revolution and
consequently it would be incorrect to label this process as a failure. Yet can
Lansing’s work really be part of the Green Revolution, when what he was arguing
was basically that the technical packages the revolution had imposed were destroying
the environment, increasing pest infestations and decreasing rice yields? If the idea
of the Green Revolution was to improve the current agricultural system, simply the
fact of proving that the previously existing system was the most efficient system, is
not an improvement of agriculture it is simply showing that the system works best
and should be left alone. Furthermore despite it being true that Lansing and Kremer’s
computer model was the tool that allowed experts to understand the water temple
system, the question of why the two different systems were invisible to each other is
not looked at closely enough in Bardini’s study. The initial Green Revolution
technics failed because they did not take into account the existing sociotechnical
water management system, and the reason they did not see this system is because
they believed that traditional knowledge had to be inferior to new modern and
scientific technics. To argue that Lansing’s work is part of the Green Revolution is to
underplay the latent patronizing beliefs of modern knowledge over traditional one in
the Green Revolution. Thus it was not that “the medium made the message
meaningful” (163) but rather that the message was already meaningful, the only
thing the medium did was open the reluctant eyes of the state and ADB experts.
The failure of the Green Revolution in Bali illustrate how ‘scientific knowledge’
and ‘local knowledge’ play a role in globalization-localization dynamics, and why this
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distinction of knowledge, or rather the status they have in the scale of knowledge
hierarchy makes no sense. In Bali the scientific knowledge that was introduced from
outside (under the Green Revolution) failed to see the existing system of water temple
management, the local knowledge, and thus had disastrous consequences. It is true that
this particular case study is from the 1980s and 90s, and that since then there has been
an attempt to include local knowledge in development practices. However these beliefs
of a hierarchy of knowledge and the superiority of modernism have not disappeared so
easily, they are still there, simply not expressed so openly. This case study shows how
local knowledge has a long history and can sometimes be much more complex than
current technologies, and should therefore not be ignored.
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