Socio-Material Bricolage and the Politics of Water Infrastructure in Kurdistan

Irrigation water decides harvests, debt and survival for smallholder farmers, and is inseparable from the infrastructures and institutions that move it. Smallholder farmers produce a large share of global food but face growing difficulties in securing reliable and fair access to water, especially in contested state settings. The Mardin, Kızıltepe and Nusaybin Plains of northern Kurdistan (southeast Turkey) are cases in point: megaprojects built and managed by the Turkish state have curtailed surface-water access, while farmers have assembled groundwater infrastructures, often beyond or beside formal regulation. This project examines how intersections between state and subaltern infrastructural practices shape access to irrigation water under contested conditions of state power. It uses socio-material bricolage to identify three mechanisms—aggregation, alteration and articulation—through which actors, infrastructures and institutions co-shape access, moving beyond a simple control-versus-resistance binary. Empirically, the project combines long-term ethnographic fieldwork, semi-structured interviews and co-design labs with farmers to show how power, inequality and survival are negotiated through water infrastructures in a conflict-affected, climate-stressed region.