Hydrosocial reconfigurations: State-led agricultural modernization and the (re)shaping of water governance in Shandong, China

Man, Caixia (2025) Hydrosocial reconfigurations: State-led agricultural modernization and the (re)shaping of water governance in Shandong, China. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

Water is crucial for agricultural production, yet its role in agrarian change is underexplored. While existing literature has examined how shifts in water access, use, and control reinforce neoliberal state hegemony and capital accumulation, less is known about the processes and power dynamics of water governance transformations in China, which are entangled with state-led agricultural modernization, de-collectivization, and market-oriented reforms. This thesis addresses this research gap by investigating how state-led agricultural modernization shapes and is reshaped by water governance in Tancheng county in Shandong, China. It advances three main arguments. First, China’s state-led agricultural modernization has transformed water governance through the development of small-scale farmland irrigation infrastructures to access water, state-reinforced self-governing organizations to manage water, and quasi-market institutions to reallocate water between agricultural and industrial sectors. The transformed water governance hybridizes formal and informal, modern and traditional, state-directed and market-oriented, and governmental and folk practices at local and grassroots levels. Second, this hybrid form of water governance entails “hydrosocial reconfigurations” in the relationships between central and local states, state and society, and state and market, driven by state logic rather than capital logic. Local governments strategically and pragmatically navigate central directives and market tools within a dynamic rural society. Third, water plays an agential role in the agricultural modernization process, reproducing the state’s multifaceted agendas with both intended and unintended political, social, and environmental outcomes. This thesis bridges agrarian political economy with political ecologies of water by examining the intricacy, diversity, and adaptability of hybrid water governance co-constituted by agrarian change in rural China.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Global Development (formerly School of International Development)
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	05 Nov 2025 11:03
Last Modified:	05 Nov 2025 11:03
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/100902
DOI:

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