Maurits W Ertsen
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 115380 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Maurits W Ertsen |
| PRENOMES | Maurits W |
| SOBRENOME | Ertsen |
| ASSINATURA | ERTSEN M W |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Delft University of Technology |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7622-253X |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 31 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 46 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 31 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2006 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 4 |
Nature's Evil
No one can say Alexander Etkind's book Nature's Evil lacks ambition. Etkind offers a huge amount of material and details on how human societies and natural resources are linked. The book aims to show that “each natural resource has its own political characteristics. Along with people who extract, process and trade it, each resource is a social institution which works according to the rules set by nature” (289). I will provide my assessment of the…
Sowing Q methodology in the rural global South
The accomplishment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is intrinsically connected to improving livelihoods in the Rural Global South (RGS). RGS livelihoods are complex, showing multiple dimensions beyond mere economic considerations. However, many related development policies (over)simplify livelihoods to income thresholds, leading to flawed interventions. Adequate strategies to address RGS livelihoods require a much deeper understanding of t…
The fluidity of empire
The Neo-Assyrian empire offers a clear example of the key relationship between imperial power and water management. Irrigated landscapes under the direct impulse of the Assyrian state were important during its imperial heydays of the late 9th to 7th centuries BC. In the very heartland of the empire (the “Assur-Nineveh-Arbela Triangle” this imperialization of the landscape was the most dramatic, with large canals, aqueducts, and dams redirecting w…
Modelling Southern Mesopotamia Irrigated Landscapes
Goodbyeee”
The relations between farmers’ land tenure security and agriculture production. An assessment in the perspective of smallholder farmers in Rwanda
On the basis of a data set from four research sites over the course of three agricultural years (2006/2007, 2012/2013, 2016/2017), this article empirically assesses the relations between land tenure security and smallholder farms’ crop production in Rwanda. We show that the general assumption that secure land tenure improves farm level harvests, is not found for smallholder farms in Rwanda. We defined a farmland tenure security index based on pla…
A bridge over troubled waters
Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public
Being late in the present to experience unprecedented times
If I would have been on time with this review, I could not have included much of 2020. No mention of COVID-19 raging through the world. No reference to a sitting president refusing to accept electi
Finnish Water Services
Reconstructing Ancient Hohokam Irrigation Systems in the Middle Gila River Valley, Arizona, United States of America
We explore the concept of scales to examine emerging irrigation realities, i.e., connecting more agents within larger spaces - relates to the complexity of irrigation systems. Modern hydraulic models allow the inclusion of emerging multi-scale issues over time, including social issues related to different spatial and temporal scales. We show that the time needed to manage irrigation efficiently relates to the size of a system. By reconstructing a…
Making the Best of a Rotten Deal
New Syndicate inspectors received detailed information about the rhythms of Gezira in the shape of a booklet with notes. The booklet served as their first encounter with Gezira tenants, "the most important factor contributing to the success of the Gezira Scheme," as well. Knowing tenants' "background and characteristics" was considered "essential to ensure smooth collaboration between Inspector and Tenant." As much as the notes given to inspector…
Another’s Week’s Toil
When visiting the Gezira in 1942 after a few years on voluntary duty in the Sudan Defense Forces (SDF), Syndicate inspector F. Bertram Hunt entrusted to his diary that he had decided to leave the SPS. He did "not like the atmosphere," as there was too much "[p]etty self-seeking," including "jockeying for position and trying to catch the bosses' eye." Catching the bosses' eye was crucial, however, as they had "great powers," basically through "one…
Move from the Old Grooves
On July 1, 1950, the Sudan Plantations Syndicate no longer managed the Gezira Scheme. The Sudanese "became owners of one of the most spectacular agricultural experiments in the Middle East and Africa, certainly the largest agricultural unit of its kind in the world, and one of the most profitable." With the Sudan Gezira Board taking over scheme management, the "cotton-growing machine" promised to change into an "educative movement." Cotton-growin…
The Everlasting Rectangles
In the early 1950s, it was clear—even to the British—that in a near future Sudan would become much more, if not completely, independent.1 At the same time, the United Kingdom wanted to keep some kind of influence in the country. One of the possible ways was to clearly offer support to Sudan's development efforts, with irrigation high on that agenda. A completed Managil area required a second dam on the Blue Nile—planned at Roseires—for its water,…
Improvising Planned Development on the Gezira Plain, Sudan, 1900–1980
The typical image of the Gezira Scheme, the large-scale irrigation scheme started under British colonial rule in Sudan, is of a centrally planned effort by a central colonial power controlling tenants and cotton production. However, any idea(l)s of planned irrigation and profit in Gezira had to be realized by African farmers and European officials, who both had their own agendas. Projects like Gezira are best understood in terms of continuous neg…
Friendship is a slow ripening fruit
This paper argues that human and material agents co-shape ‘morality’. Water systems will be discussed in more detail. Artefacts (technologies) relate humans and their worlds, but the specifics of this relationship become meaningful only within specific actor-networks. As such, the material influences the moral decisions of humans. Examples from the larger Mesopotamian area, on both state-led and community-managed water systems, are discussed to s…
The Fabric of Space
Reviewed by: The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination by Matthew Gandy Maurits Ertsen (bio) The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination. By Matthew Gandy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014. Pp. 368. $30. Water in cities is a major topic in current academic and policy circles. The real or perceived increasing water problems in urban areas, the trend of urbanization itself, and the theoretical question as t…
Long term effects of climate on human adaptation in the middle Gila River Valley, Arizona, America
The Hohokam, an irrigation-based society in the American South West, used the river valleys of the Salt and Gila Rivers between 500 and 1500 AD to grow their crops. Such irrigated crops are linking human agency, water sources and the general natural environment. In order to grow crops, water available through rain and river flows needs to be diverted to land where the plants are grown. With a focus on the Gila River, this paper uses the potential…
Tony Wilkinson and the water history of the Near East
Quagmire
Reviewed by: Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta Maurits Ertsen (bio) Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta. By David Biggs. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010. Pp. xv+300. $35. One can say many things about David Biggs’s Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta, but not that it is without ambitions. Examining precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial interventions of different stat…
Ian D. Rotherham
From human niche construction to imperial power
Stefania Barca 2010 Enclosing water
Water power has been of enormous importance in what we call now the Industrial Revolution.In England, the first factories exploited water flows with water wheels to power the machines producing cloth and other manufactured goods.Obviously, the Industrial Revolution transformed relations between people, but also relations between people and the environment.In Enclosing water: Nature and political economy in a Mediterranean valley, 1796-1916, Stefa…
Structuring properties of irrigation systems
Irrigation systems were clearly important in ancient times in supplying crops with water. This requires physical distribution facilities and socio-political arrangements to coordinate between actors. Resulting systems are highly diverse, and are being studied extensively within archeology and history. Whether initiated by a central authority or emerging from small-scale initiatives, irrigation systems are shaped through activities of individuals,…
Chandra Mukerji
I have always been fascinated by canals.Whenever I have the opportunity, which is usually during holidays, I visit canals and their remarkable features like locks, aqueducts, or sluices.Looking at these lines and structures in the landscape, one cannot but wonder about the people building them, empowered by them or simply influenced by them.I have seen many canals and their monuments, for example in the United Kingdom (the great locks at Devizes …
Structuring properties of irrigation systems
Irrigation systems were clearly important in ancient times in supplying crops with water. This requires physical distribution facilities and socio-political arrangements to coordinate between actors. Resulting systems are highly diverse, and are being studied extensively within archeology and history. Whether initiated by a central authority or emerging from small-scale initiatives, irrigation systems are shaped through activities of individuals,…
From human niche construction to imperial power
Friendship is a slow ripening fruit
This paper argues that human and material agents co-shape ‘morality’. Water systems will be discussed in more detail. Artefacts (technologies) relate humans and their worlds, but the specifics of this relationship become meaningful only within specific actor-networks. As such, the material influences the moral decisions of humans. Examples from the larger Mesopotamian area, on both state-led and community-managed water systems, are discussed to s…
Where has the water come from
past water management and social relations to water use have become increasingly relevant to our understanding of future scenarios of water use. Second, recently many research findings demonstrating high-quality scholarship on water history have been published in diverse journals. While the recent publication of some of these articles focused on water history suggests that the field is expanding in both size and scope, it also shows that the fiel…
A bridge over troubled waters
Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public
Long term effects of climate on human adaptation in the middle Gila River Valley, Arizona, America
The Hohokam, an irrigation-based society in the American South West, used the river valleys of the Salt and Gila Rivers between 500 and 1500 AD to grow their crops. Such irrigated crops are linking human agency, water sources and the general natural environment. In order to grow crops, water available through rain and river flows needs to be diverted to land where the plants are grown. With a focus on the Gila River, this paper uses the potential…
Colonial Irrigation
Colonial efforts to develop irrigation in African colonies aimed to improve the colonies' productive capacity. The resulting systems, including Gezira (British Sudan), Office du Niger (French Sudan) and the French systems in Northern Africa, have many characteristics of an imposed factory-based production regime. A factory resemblance is reflected in the mathematical layout of the systems when possible: canals are straight and plots are square. T…
Modelling Southern Mesopotamia Irrigated Landscapes
The relations between farmers’ land tenure security and agriculture production. An assessment in the perspective of smallholder farmers in Rwanda
On the basis of a data set from four research sites over the course of three agricultural years (2006/2007, 2012/2013, 2016/2017), this article empirically assesses the relations between land tenure security and smallholder farms’ crop production in Rwanda. We show that the general assumption that secure land tenure improves farm level harvests, is not found for smallholder farms in Rwanda. We defined a farmland tenure security index based on pla…
Colonial Irrigation
Colonial efforts to develop irrigation in African colonies aimed to improve the colonies' productive capacity. The resulting systems, including Gezira (British Sudan), Office du Niger (French Sudan) and the French systems in Northern Africa, have many characteristics of an imposed factory-based production regime. A factory resemblance is reflected in the mathematical layout of the systems when possible: canals are straight and plots are square. T…
Aspects of irrigation development in the Netherlands East Indies
The 'Romijn' discharge measurement structure was developed in the Netherlands East Indies. By the end of the colonial period in the 1930s, it had become the standard structure in irrigation. The Romijn design is not only still the main discharge measurement structure in Indonesia, it is also used in Dutch water management practice and education. The question of continuity is at the heart of concepts such as 'technological tradition' or 'technolog…
Controlling the farmer
Aiming at full control over farmer actions was a shared characteristic of colonial irrigation engineering approaches. However, the way control was sought in African irrigation projects was different from Asian colonies. This paper traces the origins of colonial approaches to irrigation development in Africa and the continuities between colonial and post-colonial approaches. The Kano River Project in Nigeria, part of a larger irrigation developmen…
Chandra Mukerji
I have always been fascinated by canals.Whenever I have the opportunity, which is usually during holidays, I visit canals and their remarkable features like locks, aqueducts, or sluices.Looking at these lines and structures in the landscape, one cannot but wonder about the people building them, empowered by them or simply influenced by them.I have seen many canals and their monuments, for example in the United Kingdom (the great locks at Devizes …
Cesare Rossi, Flavio Russo, and Ferruccio Russo
Water techniques have their fare share in the book on engineering inventions before our own time, written by Rossi, Russo, and Russo.Their ancient engineers' inventions deal with several categories of inventions and techniques, ranging from general categories of measuring environment, mass or time to a rather specific category of automata and robots.The term ancient is taken rather loosely, as descriptions from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and ev…
Water history and the modern
Amid the many environmental problems facing societies worldwide-climate change, scarcity of natural resources, pollution, habitat destruction-water is paramount. The debate over water management brings together national and local governments, managers and engineers, and industrial and domestic users. Who should decide how water resources are developed and distributed? This question is not a new one. Historicizing a society's relationship to water…
Where has the water come from
past water management and social relations to water use have become increasingly relevant to our understanding of future scenarios of water use. Second, recently many research findings demonstrating high-quality scholarship on water history have been published in diverse journals. While the recent publication of some of these articles focused on water history suggests that the field is expanding in both size and scope, it also shows that the fiel…
Structuring properties of irrigation systems
Irrigation systems were clearly important in ancient times in supplying crops with water. This requires physical distribution facilities and socio-political arrangements to coordinate between actors. Resulting systems are highly diverse, and are being studied extensively within archeology and history. Whether initiated by a central authority or emerging from small-scale initiatives, irrigation systems are shaped through activities of individuals,…
Stefania Barca 2010 Enclosing water
Water power has been of enormous importance in what we call now the Industrial Revolution.In England, the first factories exploited water flows with water wheels to power the machines producing cloth and other manufactured goods.Obviously, the Industrial Revolution transformed relations between people, but also relations between people and the environment.In Enclosing water: Nature and political economy in a Mediterranean valley, 1796-1916, Stefa…
Quagmire
Reviewed by: Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta Maurits Ertsen (bio) Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta. By David Biggs. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2010. Pp. xv+300. $35. One can say many things about David Biggs’s Quagmire: Nation-Building and Nature in the Mekong Delta, but not that it is without ambitions. Examining precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial interventions of different stat…
Ian D. Rotherham
From human niche construction to imperial power
Long term effects of climate on human adaptation in the middle Gila River Valley, Arizona, America
The Hohokam, an irrigation-based society in the American South West, used the river valleys of the Salt and Gila Rivers between 500 and 1500 AD to grow their crops. Such irrigated crops are linking human agency, water sources and the general natural environment. In order to grow crops, water available through rain and river flows needs to be diverted to land where the plants are grown. With a focus on the Gila River, this paper uses the potential…
Tony Wilkinson and the water history of the Near East
Making the Best of a Rotten Deal
New Syndicate inspectors received detailed information about the rhythms of Gezira in the shape of a booklet with notes. The booklet served as their first encounter with Gezira tenants, "the most important factor contributing to the success of the Gezira Scheme," as well. Knowing tenants' "background and characteristics" was considered "essential to ensure smooth collaboration between Inspector and Tenant." As much as the notes given to inspector…
Another’s Week’s Toil
When visiting the Gezira in 1942 after a few years on voluntary duty in the Sudan Defense Forces (SDF), Syndicate inspector F. Bertram Hunt entrusted to his diary that he had decided to leave the SPS. He did "not like the atmosphere," as there was too much "[p]etty self-seeking," including "jockeying for position and trying to catch the bosses' eye." Catching the bosses' eye was crucial, however, as they had "great powers," basically through "one…
Move from the Old Grooves
On July 1, 1950, the Sudan Plantations Syndicate no longer managed the Gezira Scheme. The Sudanese "became owners of one of the most spectacular agricultural experiments in the Middle East and Africa, certainly the largest agricultural unit of its kind in the world, and one of the most profitable." With the Sudan Gezira Board taking over scheme management, the "cotton-growing machine" promised to change into an "educative movement." Cotton-growin…
The Everlasting Rectangles
In the early 1950s, it was clear—even to the British—that in a near future Sudan would become much more, if not completely, independent.1 At the same time, the United Kingdom wanted to keep some kind of influence in the country. One of the possible ways was to clearly offer support to Sudan's development efforts, with irrigation high on that agenda. A completed Managil area required a second dam on the Blue Nile—planned at Roseires—for its water,…
Improvising Planned Development on the Gezira Plain, Sudan, 1900–1980
The typical image of the Gezira Scheme, the large-scale irrigation scheme started under British colonial rule in Sudan, is of a centrally planned effort by a central colonial power controlling tenants and cotton production. However, any idea(l)s of planned irrigation and profit in Gezira had to be realized by African farmers and European officials, who both had their own agendas. Projects like Gezira are best understood in terms of continuous neg…
Friendship is a slow ripening fruit
This paper argues that human and material agents co-shape ‘morality’. Water systems will be discussed in more detail. Artefacts (technologies) relate humans and their worlds, but the specifics of this relationship become meaningful only within specific actor-networks. As such, the material influences the moral decisions of humans. Examples from the larger Mesopotamian area, on both state-led and community-managed water systems, are discussed to s…
The Fabric of Space
Reviewed by: The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination by Matthew Gandy Maurits Ertsen (bio) The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination. By Matthew Gandy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014. Pp. 368. $30. Water in cities is a major topic in current academic and policy circles. The real or perceived increasing water problems in urban areas, the trend of urbanization itself, and the theoretical question as t…
Reconstructing Ancient Hohokam Irrigation Systems in the Middle Gila River Valley, Arizona, United States of America
We explore the concept of scales to examine emerging irrigation realities, i.e., connecting more agents within larger spaces - relates to the complexity of irrigation systems. Modern hydraulic models allow the inclusion of emerging multi-scale issues over time, including social issues related to different spatial and temporal scales. We show that the time needed to manage irrigation efficiently relates to the size of a system. By reconstructing a…
A bridge over troubled waters
Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public
Being late in the present to experience unprecedented times
If I would have been on time with this review, I could not have included much of 2020. No mention of COVID-19 raging through the world. No reference to a sitting president refusing to accept electi
Finnish Water Services
Geography (15 obras) · Archaeology (11 obras) · Ecology (11 obras) · Engineering (11 obras) · Political science (11 obras) · Environmental Science (9 obras) · Irrigation (9 obras) · Law (9 obras) · History (8 obras) · Business (7 obras)