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This paper examines the role played by pumps as a technology of water access. In the desert that borders Egypt's cultivated zone, pumps provide the water vital for reclamation, transforming desert into fields. Using two case studies of agricultural expansion into the desert margins, the paper explores the different ways in which farmers employ pumps to tap into the waters of the Nile. The pump is, as other scholars of science and technology studies have demonstrated, a prototypical nonhuman actor. Yet I argue that we cannot see the pump in isolation, but have to look at the passage of water through the pump and the interaction between multiple pumps in the landscape. Pumps rework the flow of water, redistributing the possibilities of agricultural production. At the same time, the flow of water in one direction shapes the possibilities for pumping in another. As some farmers pump water to irrigate the desert, they divert water away from others. As new fields emerge, old fields are rendered unproductive, generating new points of tension, resistance, and inequality within and between communities. The paper demonstrates, therefore, how situating an artifact in its material context brings to light new relations between that technology and the society that it both shapes and is shaped by.

Half title, full title, copyright page -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Preface -- Chapter 1: Southeast Asian Agricultural Expansion in Global Perspective -- Chapter 2: Agricultural Expansion:Focusing on Borneo -- Chapter 3: Agrarian Transitions in Sarawak: Intensification and Expansion Reconsidered -- Chapter 4: Claiming Territories,Defending Livelihoods:The Struggle of Iban Communities in Sarawak -- Chapter 5: Oil Palm Plantations in Sabah: Agricultural Expansion for Whom? -- Chapter 6: Agrarian Transitions in Kalimantan: Characteristics, Limitations and Accommodations -- Chapter 7: Borneo in the Eye of the Storm and Beyond -- Index.

Ghana's protected forest reserves have suffered average annual deforestation rates of 0.7%, 0.5%, 0.4%, and 0.6% for the periods 1990–2000, 2000–2005, 2005–2010 and 2010–2015, respectively. The Ashanti region has recorded the second highest deforestation rates. Despite the government's efforts to maintain and protect Ghana's forest reserves, deforestation continues. We observed deforestation patterns in the Ashanti region of Ghana from 1986 to 2015 using Landsat imagery to identify the main causes of deforestation. We obtained and processed two adjacent Landsat images from the United States Geological Survey's (USGS) National Centre for Earth Resources Observation and Science at 30 m spatial resolution for 1986, 2002, and 2015. We then supported the results with findings from 291 farm household surveys in communities fringing the forest reserves. By 2015, dense forest covered 53.3% of the land area of the forest reserves, and the remaining area had been disturbed. Expansion of annual crop farms and tree crops caused 78% of the forest loss within the 29-year period. Afforestation projects are ongoing some of which employ the participation of farmers, yet agricultural expansion exerts more pressure on the remaining dense forest. Agricultural intensification on existing farmlands may reduce farm expansion into the remaining forest areas. Strengthening and enforcing forest protection laws could minimise the extent of agricultural encroachment into forests. Mixed tree-crop systems could reduce the effects of arable farming on deforestation, limit the clearance of trees from farmlands, enhance the provision of ecosystem services, and improve the soil's fertility and moisture content. A forest transition may be underway leading to more trees in agricultural systems and better protection of residual natural forests.

Throughout history and throughout most major regions of the world, the expansion of agricultural land has served as a tool of population redistribution and has also played a key role in the formation and consolidation of States. This appears particularly true in twentieth-century Southeast Asia, as can be observed from case studies of the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam and Thailand developed in this article, and may contribute to the originality and dynamism of State formation in the region.