Enclosing Water

Stefania Barca (born in Naples in 1968) is a researcher at the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. After obtaining her PhD in Economic History from the University of Bari (1997) she was a research associate with the Institute of Studies on Mediterranean Societies in Naples (part of the Italian National Research Council) and taught courses in economic, social and environmental history. She has published numerous articles in Italian and English and co-authored the book Storia dell'ambiente. Una introduzione ('An Introduction to Environmental History', 2004, with M. Armiero). In 2003 she was involved in founding the first Italian environmental history journal, I Frutti di Demetra. Bollettino di Storia e Ambiente, on whose editorial board she still serves. From 2005 to 2008 she was in the US, first as visiting scholar to the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University and then as Ciriacy Wantrup postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. She returned to Europe in 2009. Her current research projects include a comparative environmental history of petrochemicals, and a biography of Italian leading ecologist Laura Conti.

• TABLE OF CONTENTS Part I: WATER AND REVOLUTIONS. Italian landscape with waterfall A road to waterpower 1. The landscape of Political Economy Nature and nation in the Kingdom of Naples Improving the Valley Landscape and violence 2. Empire and the 'disorder of water' Liberating nature Rivers and revolution Seeing like a statistician 3. The ecology of waterpower The making of an industrial riverscape 'I'll have your flesh for three cents per pound': Gender and mechanisation Improvement vs. habitation The machine in the river: a pastoral narrative PART II: THE ECONOMY OF WATER One hundred years of enclosures Rivers and property in the Italian South 4.Enclosing the river Picture a river open to all... The appropriators Water wars, water discipline The tragedy of enclosure 5. Floods and politics in the Apennines Seeing like an engineer The un-improving State Industry and disaster EPILOGUE Common Water

'The close and dense connections pinpointed between culture, environment, and economy make this work an enriching, even indispensable read - Essential.' R. Spickermann, University of Texas. CHOICE Academic Reviews 'The Industrial Revolution is one of the great themes for environmental history. Here Barca rises to the challenge, providing a clear case study of an industrial transformation of a riverine environment in its political, intellectual, social, and economic context.' J.R. McNeill, Georgetown University. Environmental History '[Barca's] penetrating, multi-layered unpacking of this tragic story makes significant contributions to environmental, social and intellectual history. Enclosing Water is essential reading for understanding the dialectical consequences of changing socio-ecological relationships. It offers an original, thought-provoking way of seeing how society creates landscapes out of visionary ideal of itself.' Harold Platt, Environment and History.