Acequia: Water-sharing, Sanctity, And Place (Resident Scholar)
Sylvia Rodriguez deftly integrates the daily labor investments in ditch and field maintenance with the deeply embedded religious rituals necessary for the sanctity of the agricultural landscape.....Scrupulous in her documentation of detail ... she places the study in a global arena.... --Vernon Scarborough, 9/16/07...a theoretically informed, empirically rigorous, and socially relevant anthropology of water use that overcomes the limits of academic fashion. --Casey Walsh, American Anthropologist, vol. 112, no. 2…Rodriguez writes a fascinating account of the interaction of water, faith, and landscape in northern New Mexico. Sylvia Rodriguez's Acequia details the historic management of water and its impact on daily life in the Taos Valley…. In addition to this story, which recalls a way of life that dates to Spanish colonial times, she explores the ongoing legal disputes over who owns and controls the life-giving liquid. --Jon Hunner, Western Historical Quarterly Vol. XXXIX, No. 2, Summer 2008