Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water and Power

Extract

Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water and Power. By Sanjeev Khagram. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2004. 270p. $45.00 cloth, $21.95 paper.

This is a strong example of recent work in political science that mines the boundary of comparative politics and international relations to identify the complex sources of political change. Sanjeev Khagram draws on an intensive case study of the Narmada Dam projects in India and the increasingly successful transnational protests against them to produce a more general argument about how development visions can be transformed—even by actors who seem powerless. In his broadly constructivist analysis, Khagram traces the impact of changing norms not just on visions but also on concrete global practices of development, especially the sharp drop in the number of dams completed in the last two decades of the twentieth century.