Lane, K. M. D. (2024). Fluid geographies: Water, science, and settler colonialism in New Mexico. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226833958 (paper back US$35)/ 9780226294964 (ebook, US$35)/ 9780226294827(hardback, US$105)
(URL: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/F/bo215862270.html )
Laura Bray
University of Oklahoma
To cite this review: Bray, L. (2025). Review of “Fluid geographies: Water, science, and settler colonialism in New Mexico”, Chicago University Press, by K. Maria. D. Lane, Water Alternatives, https://www.water-alternatives.org/index.php/boh/item/391-fluid
Fluid Geographies is the book that I wish existed 5-10 years ago when I was writing my dissertation. It would have both eased my entry into and deepened my understanding of water politics in New Mexico, saving me hours on hours of research and reading. Instead, when searching for scholarship at the intersection of water, race, and settlement in New Mexico, I repeatedly came up empty and found myself attempting, with limited success, to put together this history on my own, piecemeal. Fluid Geographies fills this gap by tracing the transformations in water cultures and governance during New Mexico’s territorial period (1850-1912), focused on how newly arrived Anglo settlers institutionalized modernist water management as a means to colonize and “Americanize” the region.
The strength of Fluid Geographies comes from its detailed empirical analysis of water policy and law (as well as their consequences) at the federal (chapter 3) and state (chapters 4 and 5) levels and within the courts (chapters 6 and 7). The book situates this project historically within successive waves of colonization and the unique racial politics emerging between Indigenous, Nuevomexicano/a, and Anglo-American communities (chapter 2). Lane’s argument is simple and well-sustained throughout the text: the new water management practices based on scientific knowledge and engineering expertise dispossessed Indigenous and Nuevomexicano/a communities of land and water, paving the way for Anglo settler expansion, commercial development, and eventually statehood.
My own research in this area picks up several decades after Lane’s ends and focuses on the project described in the Introduction as first piquing the author’s interest in the topic: the San Juan-Chama Project, the transbasin diversion that moves (Indigenous) water beneath the continental divide from the adjacent Colorado River basin and down the Rio Grande to the (predominantly white) city of Albuquerque (Bray 2021; 2022). My interest in understanding the relationship between race, environment, and space within this case eventually led me to theories of settler colonialism. For this reason, I did not need convincing that water policy and management often operate as tools of dispossession. Likewise, I already shared the conviction that science and technology enact certain forms of politics. Readers new to these ideas, like I was a decade ago, will appreciate the clarity and simplicity of the book’s theoretical focus. But coming to the study now, I found the argument repetitious at times and craved further theoretical development.[i]
Specifically, Fluid Geographies implicitly raises but leaves unanswered questions about the relationship between capitalist development, imperialism, and settler colonialism.[ii] The book alludes to capitalism throughout and clearly illustrates how the new forms of water management prioritized commercial development and profit over community wellbeing and subsistence activities. But the system of capitalism is rarely named and chapters 3 and 4 instead identify Progressivism—with its emphasis on “centralized control, market efficiency, and expert leadership” (p. 205)—as the principal driver behind this reorientation. While clearly part of the story, Progressive political philosophy alone cannot explain the continuities between the past and present, as described in the Conclusion.
In 1904, German sociologist Max Weber visited neighboring Indian Territory (current day Oklahoma) and observed that “with almost lightning speed everything that stands in the way of capitalistic culture is being crushed” (Weber 1988 [1904]). This statement could have just as easily been made about New Mexico. New Mexico’s territorial period occurred during the global scramble for land and resources in the late 19th and early 20th century, a period known as the New Imperialism. In the US, the end of slavery sent capitalists into a panicked search for new sources of cheap labor and raw materials. As Hannah Holleman (2018: 75) explains in Dust Bowls of Empire, the expansionary logic of the New Imperialism was supported by “white ethno-racial supremacy; the right of individuals to claim parcels of the earth as private property and to do what they want with them; and above all else, the right to make a profit.” In other words, the “central ideological tenets of the dominant capitalist societies.” These same ideological tenets are clearly evident in the modernist water regimes described in Fluid Geographies.
The Red Nation (2021: 20), a collective of Indigenous activists, points out that “much that gets framed through an environmental lens… often misses the point about capitalism.” This matters because any successful strategy for achieving transformative change begins with accurately identifying the problem, and Lane stresses that her goals are not purely academic. Rather, the book is “part of a reparative effort” that can “illuminate[] a path toward unraveling and challenging the structures of [colonial] power” (p. 19). Whether settler colonialism can be dismantled while leaving the underlying capitalistic system in place then represents a vital question.
Even so, showing how more or better “modernist” science is incapable of addressing either water injustices or the environmental challenges of our times remains an important and urgent task—this is truer now in 2025 when the political tides have shifted and dominant forces punish scholars for anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. For this too, Fluid Geographies should be commended.
References
Bray, L. A. (2021). Settler Colonialism and Rural Environmental Injustice: Water Inequality on the Navajo Nation. Rural Sociology 86(3):586-610.
Bray, L. A. (2022). Water Justice across the Rural-Urban Interface: The Making of Hydrosocial Territories in New Mexico’s Rio Grande Valley. Society & Natural Resources 35(3):320-37.
Holleman, H. (2018). Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the Injustice of Green Capitalism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
The Red Nation. (2021). The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save our Earth. Brooklyn, NY: Common Notions.
Weber, M. 1988 [1904]. A Letter from Indian Territory. Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology 16(2):133-36
[i] Readers situated within geography may have a greater appreciation for the book’s theoretical engagement with the geographies of science, history, and law.
[ii] This critique, admittedly, applies equally to my own work.
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