On Disability, Infrastructure, and Shame
Content note: This piece centers an evolving journey with internalized ableism and accompanying feelings of virtue and shame, particularly around public transportation, driving, and accessibility. Rea…
Content note: This piece centers an evolving journey with internalized ableism and accompanying feelings of virtue and shame, particularly around public transportation, driving, and accessibility. Rea…
The deadline for submitting proposals to the Vienna Anthropology Days (VANDA) 2024 is June 1. I am involved in two panels: Emergency sign and hammer on the train…
By Katie Foster, University of Georgia, United States Each year, the annual meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), known as the Conference of…
In Kuching, the capital of the Malaysian state of Sarawak, I found a musical roundabout. Large loudspeakers turn this otherwise innocuous infrastructure into an absurdist mashup of techno…
By Laura Betancur Alarcón (Integrative Research Institute on Transformations of Human-Environment Systems-IRI THESys at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin) and Ana María Arbeláez-Trujillo (Water Res…
By Maira Hayat, Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame. The three essays by Habib, Alarcón and Arbeláez-Trujillo, and Mamidipudi take the reader to worlds of…
By Peter Habib, Department of Anthropology, Emory University. I came across it on a blazing Monday, tucked away next to a small dikkān (corner store) and a complex…
By Sita Mamidipudi, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Too Salty Najma and her family are Muslim fishworkers who live half a mile away from…
By Sayd Randle, College of Integrative Studies, Singapore Management University. Walking along a covered aqueduct’s path through the desert, water can seem remarkably contained, cleanly se…
This spring, Allies meet (online) to watch ethnographic films and discuss with their makers. We have a line up of movies that explore the effects of urban infrastructures…
I am home, reading Stefan Helmreich’s new book, A Book of Waves (2023). The news on TV then catches my attention: I see images from the inauguration of…
Budka, P. (2023). Community transport infrastructures in Northern Manitoba, Canada. Paper at STS Austria Conference 2023, Vienna, Austria: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 27-29 November. Abstract …
Budka, P. (2023). Infrastructural disruption, entanglement, and change in Northern Manitoba, Canada. Paper at American Anthropological Association (AAA)/Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) Annual M…
Together with Giuseppe Amatulli (Carlton University), I am organizing the session “Narratives and Temporalities of Infrastructure: The Canadian Experience” at the meeting of the American Anthropologi…
By choosing to look at the funding from the American Government on this field, I aim to tell a different story about AI. A quick search for the…
It’s dark outside: 4:34 AM. I am peering through a truck’s windshield, gazing at a seemingly endless stretch of highway. “Female truck driver Li Ping is live streaming,”…
Budka, P. (2023). Tourism and transport infrastructures in the “Polar Bear Capital of the World”. Paper at International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) 16th Congress, Brno, Cze…
Budka, P. (2023). Digital and transport infrastructures in remote Canada: Notes on ownership and control. Paper at InfraNorth Workshop “Ethnographies of Infrastructure”, Vienna, Austria: …
In my new book, The Perfect Fit: Creative Work in the Global Shoe Industry (University of Chicago Press, 2022) I study the work of repair and maintenance necessary…
On March 1st 2023, an impromptu protest rally took place outside the headquarters of Greece’s only railway company, Hellenic Trains (HT). HT is the passenger carrier of the…
Budka, P. (2023). Relational infrastructures: Transportation and sustainability in the Subarctic town of Churchill, Canada. Paper at Biennial Conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society, Rovani…
Budka, P. (2023). “Have you seen a polar bear?” – Transportation during “bear season” in Churchill, Manitoba. InfraNorth – Building Arctic Futures: Transport Infra…
Anyone who spends time in Mexico City will spend much of it in traffic. One of the most clogged cities in the world, residents will lose on average…
Space exploration in northern Sweden often gains meaning in relation to mining. In this blog post, I ask: how does mining serve as a “speculative device” (McCormack 2018)…