Pia, A.E. 2024. Cutting the mass line: Water, politics, and climate in southwest China. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN: 9781421448848. 49.95 US$ (paperback)/49.95 US$(E-book).
(URL: https://press.jhu.edu/books/title/12586/cutting-mass-line )
Caixia Man
Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, P.R. China and University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom.
To cite this review: Man, C. (2024). Review of “Cutting the mass line: Water, politics, and climate in southwest China”, John Hopkins University Press 2024, by Andrea E. Pia, Water Alternatives, https://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/boh/item/376-pia
Sustainable water governance is often idealized as a nirvana concept and is a widely adopted policy model, framed by narratives of water scarcity and economic rationality. These narratives typically advocate for supply-side engineering with market-based, demand-side solutions. However, critical water scholars have contested this take-it-for-granted imperative and examined the political dimensions of water governance across various place-specific contexts (Molle, 2008; Lavau, 2013; Bakker, 2013; Allouche et al., 2019). In the book “Cutting the mass line: Water, politics, and climate in southwest China,” anthropologist Andrea Pia explores the responses of local water bureaucracies and rural residents to a severe drought crisis happening in 2009 and beyond through a subtle ethnographic study of a rural minority community in southwest China- an understudied area in the existing literature.
Drawing upon almost a decade of fieldwork in Huize County between 2011 and 2018, a water-challenged, ecologically damaged, multi-ethnic area in Northeast Yunnan Province, Pia foregrounds water as a life-nurturing substance that flows through a variety of life-supporting institutions and infrastructures, both within and beyond their confines. He employs the concept of “lines” as an epistemological vantage point and identifies different kinds of “lines” throughout the text: material (as a pipeline), ethical (as a lifeline), political (as the party line), and conceptual (as the mass line) (p.1). By thinking with and along these lines, he unravels the complex interplay between sustainable development paradigm and day-to-day rural drinking water provision and irrigation, which are intricately intertwined among street-level water bureaucrats, engineers, service managers and rural communities.
The book is structured into five chapters, complemented by an introduction and a conclusion. Chapter 1 to 3 draw the contours of China’s far-reaching hydraulic mission and the subjectivity of state hydrocracies. Chapter 1 (Timelines) maps the institutional evolution of Chinese water bureaucracy, tracing the water history from the central-old water administration to Mao’s hydro-engineering regime and the subsequent marketization reform for sustainable water governance. The author portrays water bureaucrats not as mere “machines of violence” but as “bricoleurs” who maintain their own worldviews and moral codes within the bounds of modern bureaucratic rationality. Chapter 2 (Gridlines) examines the institutional and infrastructural grids of drinking water provisions during drought periods and beyond. It is argued that the installation of water devices, such as water meters and flow-limiting valves, and the sanction of traditional water access methods from collective or private wells have resulted in a differential allocation of risk under the guise of techno-utopian visions and professional water practices. Chapter 3 (Lifelines) explores the ethical dilemmas confronting local water agencies as they navigate drought-proofing interventions, such as free water-sending activities, and the contentious process of collecting drinking water fees. This chapter highlights the compromises among centrally designed water policies, the ambiguous execution by local bureaucrats, and the water agencies’ efforts to preserve their institutions while serving their communities amidst unmet rural demands.
Chapter 4 to 5 orient quotidian encounters of citizens in relation to water through temporal, spatial, and ethical-political lenses. They reveal the friction between expectations, demands, and aspirations of ordinary people and dominant practices of sustainable water governance. Chapter 4 (Seams) illustrates three material sites of political struggles: the enduring yet changing agricultural livelihoods, the inner workings of water users associations for irrigation governance, and the cultural significance of ethnic minority celebrations. Through these sites, the author articulates the idea of “place” and “resistance” that are woven into the fabric of everyday life. Chapter 5 (Cracks) further elaborates the contentious issues arising from the introduction of contract farming, sustainable agribusiness, and land development initiatives in the rural countryside. It focuses on various commoning strategies used by rural residents to maintain the habitability of their communities and ensure the availability of water, thereby revealing the fissures in the state-led water sustainability model.
To conclude, this thought-provoking book significantly advances critical water studies by interrogating the techno-politics and counter-practices that have replaced, integrated with, and disrupted state’s imaginative sustainable planning in the Chinese context. In particular, it enriches the field of knowledge by attending to “the margins,” exploring alternative tactics and traditional communal practices that facilitate reliable water access. Drawing on a broad spectrum of disciplinary insights, including anthropology, environmental history, neo-institutionalism, agrarian political economy, and political ecology, the book conveys two key, meaningful messages.
First, departing from overly simplified analyses of state institutions and bureaucracies, the author unpacks the complex and often contradictory process of water provision, in which street-level water bureaucrats engage in “creative reappropriations of authoritative ways of thinking and doing within institutions that reshape internal norms and correlate private aspirations with political possibility.” (p. 40) This form of bureaucratic agency and subjectivity is conceptualized as “ethical fixes” to the institutional jams (Pia, 2017), offering a nuanced understanding of how local states actually operate and get the job done in public goods provision.
Second, the author revisits Mao’s political concept of the “mass line” for state co-optation, and reinterprets “cutting the mass line” as a potent organizing principle for climate and environmental collective action among marginalized, water-scare rural communities. This stands in contrast to the pessimism of the “tragedy of the commons,” and demonstrates that collective action is not only feasible but also self-conscious, enabling communities to reconfigure water access in pursuit of a thriving communal life. This process is not always one of violent resistance, but rather of socio-material engagement that mutually constitutes the people and place, as well as the ways in which struggles over livelihoods and nature play out in daily life (p. 140).
This book offers a compelling and theoretically grounded ethnography of China’s water governance under the threat from climate change. Despite some limitations, such as occasionally verbose phrasing and a less examined focus on the role of non-human entities-like water itself-in climate emergencies, it is a timely and valuable read for students and scholars who work on water studies and China rural politics. As the world confronts escalating challenges to water supply, access, and control, the experiences of both Chinese and global grassroots water practices will serve as inspiring and useful references for future research and action.
References
Allouche, J., Middleton, C., & Gyawali, D. (2019). The water–food–energy nexus: Power, politics, and justice. Routledge.
Bakker, K. (2013). Neoliberal versus postneoliberal water: Geographies of privatization and resistance. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 103(2), 253-260.
Lavau, S. (2013). Going with the flow: Sustainable water management as ontological cleaving. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 31(3), 416-433.
Molle, F. (2008). Nirvana concepts, narratives and policy models: Insights from the water sector. Water alternatives, 1(1), 131-156.
Pia, A. E. (2017). Back on the water margin: The ethical fixes of sustainable water provisions in rural China. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 23(1), 120-136.
