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COLIN HOAG, 2022, The Fluvial Imagination: On Lesotho’s Water-Export 
Economy, Oakland: University of California Press, 224 pp., ISBN 978-0-52038-634-
1. 
 
In The Fluvial Imagination, Colin Hoag, a former U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in 
Lesotho, examines rangeland and water conservation efforts associated with the 
Lesotho Highland Water Project, a crucial infrastructure initiative designed to cater to 
the ever-increasing water demands of the South African cities of Johannesburg and 
Gauteng. Historically, Lesotho was known for producing grains for South Africa's 
Orange Free State. It later became a labor reserve during the apartheid era in South 
Africa and eventually established itself as a supplier of wool and mohair. Today, 
Lesotho is the primary provider of fresh water to South Africa. However, sediment 
buildup in the Lesotho Highlands Water Project dams poses a significant threat to the 
country's freshwater supply. It is this issue that forms the basis of Hoag’s quest to find 
solutions to ecological problems in using the insights of anthropology. 
 
Many readers may already be familiar with Hoag's more concise analyses of water 
management and livestock production in his previous works (see especially "Water is 
a Gift that Destroys," Economic Anthropology March 2019, and "The Ovicaprine 
Mystique," American Anthropologist September 2018). Those works, like The Fluvial 
Imagination, drew on insights from Hoag’s numerous interviews with engineers, 
herders, livestock owners, and conservationists as well as analysis of records housed 
in colonial and contemporary archives. However, while previous publications provide 
part of the picture, The Fluvial Imagination contributes much more significantly to 
anthropological critiques of flawed development projects and interventions by 
drawing attention to the humanist-ecological dimensions at the core of conservation 
and resource management. As such, the work encourages a deeper understanding of 
the complex interrelations of history, community practices, and environmental 
governance.  
 
Of greatest significance for anthropologists, The Fluvial Imagination offers an 
expanded interpretation of James Ferguson’s analysis of the failed efforts by the 
World Bank in the late twentieth century to commercialize cattle livestock in Lesotho. 
While Ferguson argued that the World Bank’s development initiatives overlooked the 
social value of cattle (Ferguson called the development-defying powers of cattle “the 
bovine mystique”), Hoag suggests that a different livestock “mystique” is now at play. 
Contemporary highland herders in Lesotho are more inclined to sell their livestock, 
particularly small livestock like goats and sheep. This shift indicates a desire to raise 
many of these animals quickly in the highlands, where grazing practices contribute to 
soil erosion. This erosion subsequently clogs the dams that supply water to South 
Africa. Hoag refers to herders’ enthrallment with the potential of goats and sheep to 
make them wealthy despite herders serving as the brunt of administrators’ blame for 
erosion, as the “ovicaprine mystique.”  Although Hoag’s argument about the 



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ovicaprine mystique might have appeared earlier in the book in order to drive the 
anthropological argument about social ecology more forcefully (it is only fully 
discussed in chapter 4), addressing herders’ efforts to sustain their livelihoods 
enhances Hoag’s insightful critique of bureaucracy and resource extraction. 
 
One of the book's most compelling insights is that a defining feature of 
conservationists’ resource management efforts is the intentional engineering of both 
social and environmental resources to advance the singular goal of rapid resource 
extraction for economic development. To capture this eco-social aspect of resource 
management, Hoag develops the concept of fluvial imagination to describe water 
conservationists' implicit sociological perspectives about how water flows across the 
land. The idea not only recalls C. Wright Mills’ notion of “the sociological 
imagination,” inveighing sociologists to observe what is present but unsaid. It also 
undergirds the book's central argument that a landscape is socially engineered and 
capable of acting independently; it resists human management due to the natural 
forces of geology and gravity.  
 
While Hoag observes that prevailing narratives among engineers and administrators 
often blame herders for dams' sediment buildup, Hoag's own approach is more 
nuanced, including his assessment that conservation administrators themselves 
understand that resource management requires social engineering. Hoag uses the term 
“conservation bureaucrats” to refer to the engineers and professionals who implement 
rangeland ecology principles to maximize water exports and who are constrained by 
projects and policies that failed before them. The term is useful yet underestimates 
these professionals’ own complex observations and interventions. In the Lesotho 
highlands, conservationists’ efforts translate into programs such as fato-fato, which 
involves building rock-line sedimentation traps. Surprisingly, conservationists support 
building these traps not primarily to retain water and prevent soil erosion, but to 
generate income opportunities, thus providing meaningful work for people living in 
Lesotho’s highland herding communities. The book concludes with a discussion on 
landscape degradation and encourages conservation biologists to consider historical, 
racialized, and economic contexts alongside traditional ecological factors. 
 
Although it is consensus anthropology, Hoag's book emphasizes the failures of 
governance systems to protect long-term ecological stability, as well as the pro-
growth resource management strategies and social control methods aimed at 
promoting economic growth. As a study of environmental issues and an analysis of 
political-economic systems of governance, Hoag’s call for a more critical ecological 
science that incorporates considerations of political economy and history will appeal 
to students and scholars for its interdisciplinary insights. Anthropologists interested in 
environmental issues, economic systems, and governance should value it as a 
compelling critique of so-called development projects. Overall, Hoag’s work 
encourages readers to carefully reflect on the consequences of water commodification 
for both communities and ecosystems. Offering a critical lens for examining the 
interplay among livestock practices, ecological governance, and ecosystems, The 
Fluvial Imagination highlights the socio-economic dynamics that shape the lives of 
herders. By introducing concepts like the “ovicaprine mystique” and the “fluvial 
imagination,” Hoag encourages readers to rethink the implications of resource 
extraction and management strategies. 
 



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KEY WORDS: Lesotho, herders, water, environment, conservation 

Reviewed by Amy E. Stambach, author of The Corporate Alibi: Capitalism and the 
Cultural Politics of US Investments in Africa, University of California, 2025. ORCID: 
0000-0002-0693-3966 
 
 
 

© 2025 Amy E. Stambach 

 


