POLITICAL. GEOGRAPHY,Vol. 11, No. 1, January 1992,37-54 zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTS Ideology, property, and groundwater resources An exploration of relations JODY EME~ zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTS School of Geography, Clark Uniuersiy, Worcester, MA 01610,USA REBECCA ROBERTS Department of Geogr@y, University of Iowa, Iowa Ciy, Iowa, USA DAVID SAURI Departamento de Geografia, Universitat Autbaoma de Barcelona, 08193 Bellatewa, Barcelona, Spain zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUT ABSTRACT. The study of property rights in water resources has been rather narrowly focussed on the instrumental aspect of the right as a tool for achieving allocative efficiency. A richer view of the historical, ideological justifications for private property and the contradictions of these justifications leads to insights in explanation of diverse resource-use systems. We examine several justifications important to property rights in groundwater in Texas and New Mexico, and consider the implications of these justifications (and their contradictions) for production and reproduction of resource-use regimes. The meaning of property is not constant. The actual institution, and the way people see it, and hence the meaning they give to the word, all change over time (B)ut changes are due partly to changes in the ideas people have of it. This is simply to say that property is both an institution and a concept and that over time the institution and concept influence each other (MacPherson, 1978: 1). In what follows, we will be considering the familiar story of private property as a central institution of Western society, but in a somewhat unfamiliar light. Our concern is to examine the historical and divergent ideologies of property, to illustrate their continuing and contradictory presence in contemporary groundwater management systems, and to question their meaning on a number of counts. In so doing, we hope to make a contribution to clarifying the social foundations of American resource-use systems. The 0962.6298/ 92/ 01 0037-18 0 1992 Butterwortl-Heinemann Ltd