Tracing (un)common senses in irrigation communities: Hegemonies and counter-hegemonies across Spain's Tagus-Segura interbasin transfer complex

In Spain, hydraulic infrastructure in the form of Interbasin Water Transfers and irrigation technology in the form of drip irrigation are two examples of projects whose underlying principles have been justified by powerful actors and the State, and these principles have become common sense. In this article, I situate these two examples within a hydrosocial territory lens to understand the common senses justifying interbasin water transfers and drip irrigation, and how they serve as hegemonic projects that govern and dominate irrigators and their territories. I argue that hegemony materializes through the performance of common senses underpinning these projects, though these shift, adapt, and fall out of favour either to new, emergent hegemonies or to good senses that reveal the contradictions of hegemonic concepts. I mobilise this argument to characterize three territories that are interconnected by the Tagus-Segura Interbasin Water Transfer in Spain, and which differentially experience the spread of drip irrigation as hegemonic core, hegemonic frontier and counterhegemonic hydrosocial territories. Through their histories, experiences and practices, these territories transform and are transformed by webs of domination and resistance within hegemonies’ search for unquestioned, consented governance.