Water-related disasters have become more unpredictable amidst human-induced climatic and hydroecological changes, with profound effects on people inhabiting fragile river basins. In this article, I analyse drastic waterscape transformations and people’s differentiated exposure to water-related vulnerabilities in the Grijalva River lower basin, southeastern Mexico, focusing on how state authority is reinforced through waterscape alterations and how altered waterscapes shape state-making and scalar politics. Examining interlinkages between 1) state-making and governance; 2) resource-making and politics of scale; and 3) hazard-making and the dynamics of socionature, the article contributes to scholarly and development practice discussions on environmental vulnerability. I argue that the goals of consolidating state power and promoting development through massive waterscape changes and resource extractions have provoked hazards that are difficult to control, resulting in differentiated distribution of environmental benefits and burdens. Drawing on archival research, documentary analysis, thematic interviews, and ethnographic fieldwork, the study illustrates the overlapping and cumulative effects of state-making, politics of scale, and the dynamics of socionature on socially differentiated vulnerability. Although the forms of governance shift over time, statecraft as a mode of consolidating state authority and controlling lower-basin environments and residents persists. The government prevents social mobilisation through political persuasion and pressure, and disciplines residents to adapt to altered waterscapes, while allowing few changes in prevalent power structures. Simultaneously, the study demonstrates that water cannot be controlled by political rules and requisites, while local residents reinterpret dominant ways of governing through claim-making, negotiation, everyday resistance, and situational improvisation, albeit within unequal power relations. The study enhances understanding of water-related vulnerabilities resulting from recurrent, yet temporally remoulded agendas of state-making combined with socially differentiating politics of scaling and the dynamics of socionature, which altogether reformulate human-nonhuman interactions and make local smallholders and peri-urban poor increasingly vulnerable to floods.

在人为引起的气候和水文生态变化中，与水有关的灾害变得更加难以预测，对居住在脆弱流域的人们产生了深远的影响。在本文中，我分析了墨西哥东南部格里哈尔瓦河下游流域的剧烈水景转变和人们对与水相关的脆弱性的差异暴露，重点关注国家权威如何通过水景改造得到加强，以及改造后的水景如何塑造国家制定和标量政治。检查 1) 国家制定和治理之间的相互联系；2）资源制造和规模政治；和 3) 危害的形成和社会自然的动态，这篇文章有助于关于环境脆弱性的学术和发展实践讨论。我认为，通过大规模的水景变化和资源开采来巩固国家权力和促进发展的目标引发了难以控制的危害，导致环境收益和负担的差异分配。该研究利用档案研究、文献分析、专题访谈和民族志田野调查，说明了国家制定、规模政治和社会自然动态对社会分化脆弱性的重叠和累积影响。尽管治理形式随着时间的推移而发生变化，但作为巩固国家权力和控制下流域环境和居民的一种模式，治国方略仍然存在。政府通过政治说服和压力阻止社会动员，并训练居民适应变化的水景，同时允许对普遍的权力结构进行很少的改变。同时，该研究表明，水不能由政治规则和必要条件控制，而当地居民通过主张、谈判、日常抵抗和情境即兴发挥重新诠释了主导的治理方式，尽管是在不平等的权力关系中。该研究增强了对反复出现但在时间上经过改造的国家制定议程与社会差异化的规模政治和社会自然动态相结合所导致的与水相关的脆弱性的理解，这些政策共同重新制定了人类与非人类的互动，并使当地小农和 而当地居民通过主张、谈判、日常抵抗和情境即兴发挥重新诠释了主导的治理方式，尽管是在不平等的权力关系中。该研究增强了对反复出现但在时间上经过改造的国家制定议程与社会差异化的规模政治和社会自然动态相结合所导致的与水相关的脆弱性的理解，这些政策共同重新制定了人类与非人类的互动，并使当地小农和 而当地居民通过主张、谈判、日常抵抗和情境即兴发挥重新诠释了主导的治理方式，尽管是在不平等的权力关系中。该研究增强了对反复出现但在时间上经过改造的国家制定议程与社会差异化的规模政治和社会自然动态相结合所导致的与水相关的脆弱性的理解，这些政策共同重新制定了人类与非人类的互动，并使当地小农和城郊贫民越来越容易受到洪水的侵袭。