Josepha Wessels

Malmö University | mah · School of Arts and Communication (K3)

Socio-hydrology has expanded and been effective in exposing the hydrological community to ideas and approaches from other scientific disciplines, and social sciences in particular. Yet it still has much to explore regarding how to capture human agency and how to combine different methods and disciplinary views from both the hydrological and social...

In 2013, Aleppo province was engulfed in violence. The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and affiliated Shi’a militias executed a campaign of massacres in the rural areas located on the eastern fringes of the province. The violence caused an exodus from this region, eventually dissipating local rural communities entirely. What can explain such extreme and bru...

Since the 1970s, Arab documentary filmmakers have highlighted struggles for personal freedom, dignity and democracy by those restricted by oppressive systems of colonialism, occupation and authoritarianism. In this article I study four contemporary Arab documentary films to identify a path vital for the rethinking of cosmopolitanism and global citi...

This article seeks to understand mediatized dynamics of regime-critical activism and cultural performances by Syrians in Europe. The focus of this research is on the Öresund-region between Denmark and Sweden. Sweden was the first country in Europe to give immediate permanent residence to Syrian refugees. It initially received most of the Syrian ref...

Syria is now one of the most important countries in the world for the documentary film industry. Since the 1970s, Syrian cinema masters played a defining role in avant-garde filmmaking and political dissent against authoritarianism. After the outbreak of violence in 2011, an estimated 500,000 video clips were uploaded making it one of the first You...

As an introduction to this special issue of CyberOrient, this text provides an insight into ongoing research in studies of digital layers of revolutions, digital communication, and dissidence in the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) region. Providing a short overview of the latest developments of uprisings and street demonstrations in the reg...

The arrival of the Digital Age added a new way to preserve memories of war and conflict. These developments beg deeper reflection on the role of cyberspace and how memories of conflict have become publicly and collectively owned, shared and mediated in the digital space. Cyberspace offers a context for the deposit of digital memorials for victims a...

The popular uprising that began in Syria in 2011 generated an unprecedented number of YouTube videos recording events in Syria; this emphasized how the social media platform had become an important alternative space for news and information, a space beyond the control of the government. In this article, I address the role of Syrian video activism i...

Due to their efficiency, revitalized traditional techniques for irrigation management of scarce water resources have been suggested as a way to at least partially cope with the present water crises in the Middle East. A better irrigation management includes re-using treated wastewater in agriculture. Treated wastewater should also be used in indust...

This paper is written within the framework of the project Hydropolitics in the Jordan River Basin, as part of the Middle East in the Contemporary World programme at Lund University, Sweden. In 2009, working as a freelance documentary filmmaker, I started to film in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories for the development of a documentary...

Currently there is no coherent or sustainable water cooperation among the five states—Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian territories and Syria—that share the Jordan River. Why do people not cooperate on sustainable river basin management, even if it seems the most rational course from the perspective of economic benefits? I hypothesize that the p...

Hydro-hegemonic praxis defines much of Israel’s occupation that has continued since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. Two empirical case studies of hydro-hegemony and counter-hegemony at local level are compared in this paper: the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Both case studies show that control over wate...

The concept of Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) has enjoyed immense popularity and thus has been the preferred approach for river basin management. IWRM generally has a strong focus on rational choice, based on a technocratic conceptual interpretation of the conventional hydrological cycle. However, uncritical acceptance of IWRM runs the...

The Middle East and North Africa region, the most water-scarce populated region in the world, faces critical challenges for providing water to its ever-increasing population and protecting its agricultural economy, which demands colossal amounts of water for irrigation. The political turbulence in the region threatens eff orts to build cooperation...

Groundwater management is among the most important challenges facing the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region (World Bank 2000). It is the world’s most arid, with 1% of the global renewable fresh water available to its population. By the 1990s, eight countries in the Middle East (Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Jor...

Communities all over the world are using traditional technologies to extract drinkingwater, irrigate their lands and feed their livestock. But these often sustainable and ancient ways to make use of groundwater are in rapid decline worldwide. A research project started in 1999 to study the rehabilitation of 1500-year old water tunnels called "qanat...

In the summer of 2000, a small group of Syrian villagers living near the borders of the steppe southeast of Aleppo renovated and cleaned their own water supply with international help. The source of their water is an ancient Byzantine underground water supply system called the qanat. The cleaning was a pilot project in an effort to contribute to th...

The water shortage in the Middle East is a well-known problem. The introduction of diesel operated pumps for irrigation has caused a severe drop in groundwater levels. At the same time the demand for groundwater is growing to alarming proportions. Alternative ways of groundwater supply and management need to be found to halt social and economical d...

Solutions to water shortage in arid areas include traditional methods as well as modern techniques. This article shows how ancient water systems called qanats can be used to provide small communities with a sustainable water supply for drinking and irrigation.

This paper is written within the framework of the Lund University project on "Hydropolitics in the Jordan River Basin". The Jordan River Basin is likely the most stressed watershed on our planet both physically and politically. Domination and control over the waters of the Jordan River are central to the conflict between the riparian countries Leba...