Village and Development

Village and Development

Colonization of the Lifeworld: Dehgolan Farmers' Confrontation with Water Governance; A Critical Ethnography of Socio-Cultural Transformation

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
H. Daneshmehr 1
O. Hedayat 2
1 Associate Professor, Department of Sociology. Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj, Iran.
2 Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Kurdistan, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Kurdistan, Sanandaj,
10.30490/rvt.2025.367480.1681
Abstract
Abstract
Introduction
In recent decades, Iran's water crisis has transformed from an environmental issue into a social and governance crisis. Studies indicate that Iran's governance pattern predominantly follows a centralized, technocratic, and state-centric constructivist model, lacking effective participatory mechanisms at the local level. This situation, compounded by the neglect of water in national macro-policy, the absence of sound governance and future planning, a failure to shift perspectives on water resource management, and a lack of scientific rigor in the policymaking process, has placed agriculture and farmers - as the primary stakeholders of water resources - at the forefront of confronting the devastating consequences of the water crisis and poor governance. This research aims to investigate the profound and often contradictory dynamics of the colonization and socio-cultural transformation of the lifeworld of farmers in the villages of Dehgolan County, resulting from the critical water conditions and its consequences within the context of a critique of governance. The theoretical and methodological stance of this research is based on the lived narratives of Dehgolan's farmers, drawn from within their community and socio-cultural structure regarding their encounter with the water crisis and its governance. These narratives are treated not merely as raw or descriptive data, but as rich data with the objective of exposing the logics and mechanisms of their marginalization in governance, revealing the entanglement of dominant rationalities in both water governance and the crisis, and analyzing the potential for reconstructing and empowering their lifeworld.
Theoretical Framework
The theoretical and conceptual framework is built around the concepts of the lifeworld, socio-cultural issues, water governance, and environmental policies. Consequently, the theories adopted are Environmental Governance theory [with an emphasis on water governance], Habermas's theory of the Colonization of the Lifeworld, Bourdieu's theories of Capital [cultural, social, and symbolic violence], and Critical Environmental Policy theory. Environmental governance specifically addresses issues related to the access, use, conservation, and management of common-pool natural resources. Critical Environmental Policy theory, inspired by theorists such as David Schlosberg and Naomi Klein, emphasizes the intersection of social inequality, power, and environmental degradation. Habermas's theory of the Colonization of the Lifeworld explains how systems driven by economic and administrative imperatives invade and distort the lifeworld, which encompasses culture-based values, norms, and communicative practices. Furthermore, Bourdieu's concepts of cultural capital, social capital, and symbolic violence provide valuable insights into power dynamics in water management.
Marials and Methods
The Critical Ethnography method was adopted due to its inherent critical, advocacy-oriented, and change-driven perspective. The methodology incorporated Carspecken's critical ethnography approach, which involves five stages: 1) Compiling Primary Record (Monologic Data), 2) Preliminary Reconstructive Analysis, 3) Dialogical Data Generation, 4) Describing System Relations (Explanation of Findings). Data collection was conducted through observation and semi-structured interviews with 23 farmers from 11 villages in Dehgolan County, selected based on criterion-based selection, theoretical, purposive, and maximum variation sampling strategies. This fieldwork was carried out during the winter of 2024 and spring of 2025.
Results and Dicsussion
The findings indicate the extraction of 8 secondary categories and 4 core categories, encompassing market logic, state logic, conditions for action, and dominant resources/constraints (meaningful action/level of agency). The analysis of these categories revealed that farmers' actions in confronting the water governance system exhibit a paradoxical pattern of resistance and passivity. Resistance manifests through collective actions such as reviving traditional irrigation practices and forming water councils. These actions represent a defense of the "lifeworld" against the specialist system and instrumental rationality, aiming to reconstruct collective identity through communicative rationality and local knowledge. Passivity, on the other hand, manifests as the sale or lease of land and migration to cities. These phenomena are not a choice but a necessary survival strategy in the face of the impossibility of profitable agriculture. Farmers' actions oscillate between these two poles. The conditions shaping farmers' actions result from the interplay of three crises: governance, water, and socio-cultural structure, placing farmers in an inevitable position to react (through resistance or passivity). Two key logics have formulated these conditions of action and enabled the colonization of the farmers' lifeworld: State Logic operates through mechanisms of "symbolic violence." The state, via centralized policies (issuing well permits indiscriminately without farmer participation), denial of the legitimacy of local knowledge, and discrimination, replaces "communicative rationality" with "instrumental rationality." Furthermore, the reduction of state support (cuts in subsidies, exclusion from training) paves the way for the dominance of Market Logic. Market Logic operates through the mechanism of commodifying water and promoting individualism. This logic: reduces water to a "profitable commodity," replacing solidarity with competition, thereby destroying farmers' social capital. It also promotes commercial agriculture and monoculture (e.g., potatoes), increasing dependence on the market and destroying environmentally-sensitive local knowledge, leading to a transformation of farmers' cultural values. Finally, it justifies the sale/lease of land and migration as "solutions," which ultimately plays a key role in increasing farmers' dependence on the market. In this unequal field of action, farmers' resources and constraints are caught in the clash between state and market rationalities. Their social capital (solidarity and mutual aid networks) and cultural capital (local knowledge), which operate within the framework of communicative rationality and the interpretation of water as a "collective right to life," become colonized.
Conclusion
The results indicate that the neoliberal governance of agriculture, based on the market and state bureaucracy, has been the dominant rationality governing water and the force transforming the cultural structure and colonizing the lifeworld of farmers. Therefore, to reconstruct the lifeworld and empower farmers, mutual-aid networks (social capital) should function as a "counter-logic to the market" by establishing local cooperative economies to break the dependence on monoculture and give farmers greater agency. Furthermore, by continuing local irrigation methods and forming water councils, centralized and discriminatory institutional laws can also be rendered less effective, paving the way for establishing communicative action and dialogue between farmers and the dominant rationalities.
Keywords
Lifeworld Colonization
Water Governance
Socio-Cultural Transformation
Critical Ethnography
Dehgolan County

Subjects

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