Water, Works and Wages: The Everyday Politics of Irrigation Management Reform in the Philippines

This book investigates one of the four sub-systems of the largest irrigation project in the Philippines. Based on extensive field research, its aim is to examine the everyday realities of irrigation management reform. The author covers the effects of reform policies on all levels, from the farmers, the fieldworkers and engineers, to the local politicians. While most studies of irrigation reform simply cover the policies adopted and their outcomes, this book looks in more detail at the manner in which those policies are put into effect. It places irrigation reform in a socio-political context, and shows that results are highly unequal due to factors such as political patronage and connections of family and friendship.