Contenu du sommaire : L'eau

Friday's Water : Water Rights and Social Hierarchy in Sharqiya Water ownership, like that of land, is a matter of private property: However, in so far as land and water rights are not inseparably linked, water ownership remains distinct. Access to irrigation water either derives from permanently owned water rights, or is bought on a basis of weekly watering periods, sold by auction of Fridays. Permanent water owners and «waterless» farmers are the two groups which co-exist in the village communities of Sharqiya (oasis of the Sultanate of Oman). This article attempts to answer the following question : in what way does the history of these communities and their african migrations contribute to an understanding of their present-day hierarchical organisation ? The ownership of water towers by the falaj, a village institution charged with managing the irrigation network and the water credit system are specific to Oman. By virtue of the falaj's rights, all community members can have access to water. By ensuring a certain equilibrium in the distribution of water, the falaj has been able to maintain the community's cohesion throughout the vicissitudes of history.

Irrigation Order in the Nara Basin (Japan) The «irrigation order» consists of the customs underlying the socio-economic control of water ressources and the different types of agricultural production and management resulting from this control. In the Nara Basin (Japan), this order is structured around village communities under natural conditions made difficult by overcrowding and the considerable water needs entailed by rice cultivation. The improvement of irrigation by the Yoshino-river development project has brought about a truly capitalist revolution and a new logic in the irrigation order which is readily reflected in the landscape.

Water as a Key Factor in Chinese Rural Economy China has recently undergone a new and far reaching agricultural reform with beneficial effects upon the population. It is nevertheless obvious that in the midand long-term, technical considerations, specifically those relating to the management of water, remain crucial from both an economic and a social point of view. Following a general survey, several regions characteristic of chinese rural society are examined. Drawing on his own observations from 1958 to 1982, the author studies the technical evolution of water management and its effects upon production and the standard of living.

Water in Hispano-arabic Food and Cooking during the Middle-Ages For Hispano-arabic physicians of the Middle-Ages, water was not only a natural element but the essential condition of health and civilization. The ancient philosophical doctrine regarding the function of water was further amplified : from hydraulics developed a theory of taste to be found in the agronomical literature ('Awwārn), cooking-books (Kitāb al-tābikh), as well as in Beyṭār's considerable pharmacopoeia. As a liquid, water is also capable of effecting decompositions and new mixings ; cooking thus becomes an alchimie process involving dessication (couscous), fermentation (bread) and the determination of suitable tastes for health and pleasure.

Hydraulic Equipment and Sanitary Practices in Nineteenth Century France In nineteenth century France, still predominantly rural, the population's «relationship to water» changed slowly. Hydraulic equipment, developed by the elite, was progressively installed in the cities : first in polyvalent and prosperous cities, then in middle size towns, and finally in small townships and even — later on — in certain villages. This massive introduction of «pure» water has practically no effect upon existing sanitary practices : dirt was considered to be a protection and «horrible filth» to be a source of fertility ; the divine forces held to inhabit the fountains were feared, and the idea that water, until that time a gift of God and Nature, should be paid for was looked upon as highly unwelcome.

Washerwomen and Blind River. Sickness in Guadeloupe In Guadeloupe, rivers play an important role both on the level, of regional sociability and on that of family-scale economy. Allegedly campaigning against blind river sickness, health education programs are trying to change the inhabitants behaviour. The author examines the ways in which the local population comes to terms with these interventions.

An Infinite Perspective. Sea, Coast, and Land at La Hague A peninsula is a hybrid territory, neither completely at sea nor completely joined with the land. This paper analyses the relationship between these two elements — land and sea — at the Hague, a region located in the extreme North- Western part of Cotentin, in Southern Normandy (France). At first glance, the lower, inhabited and cultivated part of the peninsula, that associated with the land, contrasts with the deserted and apparently little or badly exploited coastal area, the latter being prolonged by an extremely dangerous sea in which large-scale fishing has been unable to develop. However, this domination of the land-linked side is but an apparent one. The wild coast is highly important both for sociability and gardening. As for the sea, it appears in legends to be composed of different more or less well known territories each of which constitutes a distinct universe open to the imagination. These ways of «living» and «thinking» the coast and the sea have fashioned the representations and mental attitudes of the people of the Hague whose singularity within the Normandy region has always been remarked upon.

Water in Creuse In the department of Creuse, a granitic land, water surges everywhere. Brooks (gânes) and rivulets stream down the «mountain», taking on the name of the particular region they water. The founts — endowed with oracular or curing powers — that served as historical landmarks since the Celtic occupation, draw but few pilgrims nowadays ; but the spring, the washing-place and the watering- place still indicate in every village the water site. And in the fields, the abandoned «fisheries», the blurred pattern of the draining- furrows, remain as traces of the age-gold irrigation network ruled by a system of alternating water-rights — l'ajournement — Since the relatively recent canalisation of spring-water for public use, the meadow lands have been turned into ponds which offer new places of sociability, palliating to some extent the feeling, among the «mountain» people, of having been dispossessed of water that belonged to them by location in their area.

Water in Folk-Songs and Folk-Dances in Vietnam Water is present in the folk songs, the folk dances and the performing arts in Vietnam. It is essential in the mua roi nuoc, the water puppets moving on the water's surface of the pools, ponds and rivers. Invented in Vietnam in the Xth century, they still last up to the present day.

The Glacier's Water Attempting to give credit to the truth value of the origin myth of an alpine glacier, this paper discloses the inner workings of a symbolic explanation of the expansion of the glacier — a phenomenon made uncanny by its erratic periodicity and which alarms, by its sometimes inordinate amplitude, peasants whose life nevertheless depends on water from the glaciers. From the first verses of a cosmogony — that of the Genesis — which the sound patterning of the week locally translates into a way of life on every God given day, to the dark vision of a glacial Apocalypse which ends the paper, with, on the way, the cyclical management of the artificial irrigation systems of the Valais (deliberatly structured so as to signify in practice the continuity of vital processes and the solidarity of the agents who maintain them on earth as well as in Heaven), the analysis throws light on some of the aspects of a native sociological physics the consistency, the rigor, and, therefore, the explanatory power of which have nothing to envy from modern glaciology, this branch of a naturalistic and exogeneous physics.