Contesting Instrumental Knowledge With Communicative Action
Why Kalabagh Dam (Pakistan) Remains Unbuilt
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20413484 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tarique Niazi (0000-0002-7263-5617, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, WI, USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 32 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 441-465 |
| Publication date | 2019-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Organization & Environment (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1086-0266 • E-ISSN: 1552-7417 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1086026618773696 |
| OpenAlex | W2804974344 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 22 |
The building of Kalabagh Dam—Pakistan’s largest hydropower development project—has been stalled for decades. This article interrogates why and how this project has been grounded for so long. It shows that the state and its administrative agencies that support dam building rest their case on “expert” knowledge, while dismissing the counterknowledge produced by the anti-dam coalition of environmentalists, nationalists, and spiritualists as “inexpert.” Consequently, the dam has become a proxy for contending knowledge claims between the dam’s supporters and anti-dam activists. Deploying Habermas’s communicative action theory that critiques expert knowledge as “instrumental rationality,” this article demonstrates that the Pakistani anti-dam movement’s communicative action played the pivotal role in stalling the dam’s building. It typologizes actors, defending and opposing the dam, and documents their knowledge claims. The article contributes to the environmental movement literature by illuminating the ways in which anti-dam activists structure communicative claims, and deploy them for the public contestation of instrumental knowledge and interests
Collective action · Communicative action · Hydropower · Political science · Politics · Rationality · Social science · Sociology · Engineering · Foucault, Power, and Ethics · Hydropower, Displacement, Environmental Impact · Law · Water Governance and Infrastructure
The Social Production of Scientific Knowledge
The Knowledge Interests of the Environmental Movement and its Potential for Influencing the Development of Science
Ecologies of the Heart
The Brazilian Anti-Dam Movement
Ecological Thinking
Poverty and Famines
New Social Movements
Contesting expertise
Indigenous knowledge and the desertification debate
Dilemmas in Critical Planning Theory
Twenty Lessons in Environmental Sociology
The Violence of the Green Revolution
Sind, A General Introduction
Seeing Like a State
Rationality and Social Rationalization
New Social Movement Theories
Rural Poverty and the Green Revolution
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,86 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2026 (8) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 6 |