9311823 Boxer Dr. Boxer is seeking to enhance our understanding of the relations between cultural and technological aspects of the methods employed for conservation, control and use of water resources in the 20th century China. In particular, Dr. Boxer is examining how the traditional approach, called shuili, to control of water resources conflicts with modern Western engineering approaches. Shuili is not simply folk-knowledge but is a scientific and technical knowledge based on over two thousand years of trying to control raging rivers and streams in this ancient land. How the traditional Chinese engineers have adapted shuili to meet the demands of technological modernization and change is the principal interest to be investigated in this project. Dr. Boxer is contrasting Chinese and foreign views over the past 70-80 years on the social benefits and costs of water engineering in the Yangzi River basin. He is examining three cases: the controversial Three Gorges Dam, the Dujiangyan irrigation system, and controversies over physical connections between upstream-downstream water problems and the social and ecological effects of engineering solutions. Dr. Boxer is aiming to show how tensions between Chinese and foreign technological approaches helped redefine traditional Chinese ideas about water's role in mediating nature- society relations. A major goal is to document the process through which traditional attitudes and beliefs about the human and environmental impacts of water engineering change in response to foreign values, technologies, and political ideologies. Results of this study promise to be of great interest for examining human/environment interactions and for students of modern China, and the comparative social history of science, technology and engineering. ***
