Often accounts of water in the Nile Basin focus on trans-boundary conflicts over the shared resource. In this talk, Barnes presents an alternative view of water politics, building on ethnographic work with farmers, irrigation engineers, policymakers, and international donors in Egypt. Drawing attention to everyday practices of blocking, releasing, channeling, and diverting water, which take place on a variety of scales, she shows how the waters of the Nile are constantly made and remade as a resource. Barnes argues that it is in these quotidian practices, which shape how much and what kind of water different people are able to access, that some of the most significant political contestation actually lies.

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