Pumping possibility: Agricultural expansion through desert reclamation in Egypt

Abstract

This paper examines the role played by pumps as a technology of water access. In the desert that borders Egypt’s cultivated zone, pumps provide the water vital for reclamation, transforming desert into fields. Using two case studies of agricultural expansion into the desert margins, the paper explores the different ways in which farmers employ pumps to tap into the waters of the Nile. The pump is, as other scholars of science and technology studies have demonstrated, a prototypical nonhuman actor. Yet I argue that we cannot see the pump in isolation, but have to look at the passage of water through the pump and the interaction between multiple pumps in the landscape. Pumps rework the flow of water, redistributing the possibilities of agricultural production. At the same time, the flow of water in one direction shapes the possibilities for pumping in another. As some farmers pump water to irrigate the desert, they divert water away from others. As new fields emerge, old fields are rendered unproductive, generating new points of tension, resistance, and inequality within and between communities. The paper demonstrates, therefore, how situating an artifact in its material context brings to light new relations between that technology and the society that it both shapes and is shaped by.