Archiving for the Anthropocene: Notes from the Field Campus
On a chilly Sunday afternoon in March, our Field Campus group walked through downtown Granite City, Illinois. Located just 6 miles north of St. Louis, the downtown was…
Tag: infrastructure
Optics and Fluidity: Evading Surveillance in Hong Kong
請點此閱讀中文版 Eyes in/on/for Hong Kong At the Hong Kong airport, thousands of protesters line the arrivals hall. Creating a corridor for passengers to walk through, they stand silently,…
Driver-Citizens and Technical Safety in India: Traffic Violations and Penalties in the Motor Vehicle Act 2019
One of the first things that gets discussed with reference to India is road traffic. Erstwhile known as a land of snake charmers, this classically orientalist image of…
“India’s Gig-work Economy” Roundtable
This roundtable discussion marks the end of our series on India’s Gig-work Economy. In this discussion, we reflect on methods, challenges, inter-subjectivities and possible future directions for…
Negotiating Ethical Technology Use: Trust and Care in End-of-Life Conversations
The video-screen carrying robot used by doctors to converse with patients. The headline on the local news station’s website was sensational: “Bereaved Family Upset Kaiser Used Robot…
New Zine on the History of Sanitation
Our zine “Infrastructural Digest” is now completed(!) and 250 copies have just been printed for the opening of the Privy2 demonstration garden. The zine features original artwork and…
Choreographies of magic and mess: AusSTS in Melbourne and Darwin
As the presenter encouraged the academics in the room to consider what it means for nanotechnology to sell itself as ‘magic’, boots appeared outside the window behind him.…
Battery Life: Charging Culture at the End of Energy
Vodka-tonic. Take my picture. Charge my phone. Vodka-tonic. Take my picture. Charge my phone. This (or a similar sequence) is an irritatingly common refrain heard by many waitstaff…
Power Chronography of Food-Delivery Work
*A note from Co-PI Noopur Raval: The arrival and rise of gig-work globally has ushered in a new wave of conversations around the casualization of labor and the…
Ståle Knudsen: Debts and the end for infrastructure fetishism in Turkey
The immense new Istanbul Airport, additional spectacular bridges over the straights, the Marmaray metro/train tunnel under the Bosporus, high-speed trains, highways, extension of the Istanbul metro ne…
Ladies ‘Log’: Women’s Safety and Risk Transfer in Ridehailing
*A note from Co-PI Noopur Raval: The arrival and rise of gig-work globally has ushered in a new wave of conversations around the casualization of labor and the precarious…
Not knowing as pedagogy: Ride-hailing drivers in Delhi
*A note from Co-PI Noopur Raval: The arrival and rise of gig-work globally has ushered in a new wave of conversations around the casualization of labor and the precarious…
Networking Nature: Tracking Terra, Sensing the Sea, Atmo-structures
Lately, when I have the pleasure of walking in the stacks of a regal, well-stocked, old library, and am in a devious mood, I imagine I am an…
Hearing the Unknown: Case Studies in Cuba and Taiwan
The saga of mysterious sounds afflicting US diplomats in Cuba—and more recently China–has appeared in the US news cycle intermittently over the last couple of years. Since 2017,…
Presentation: MyKnet.org: The cultural history & social life of an indigenous web-based environment
Budka, P. (2019). MyKnet.org: The cultural history and social life of an indigenous web-based environment. Paper at “The Web That Was: Archives, Traces, Reflections” Conference (RESAW19),…
Ebola Afterlives by Eva Vernooij
Image by Eva Vernooij Adiatu[1], a young Sierra Leonean laboratory scientist, turns on the light in the high risk room of the molecular unit of the recently renovated…
Book Chapter: Indigenous Media Technologies in “The Digital Age”
Budka, P. (2019). Indigenous media technologies in “the digital age”: Cultural articulation, digital practices, and sociopolitical concepts. In S. S. Yu & M. D. Matsaganis (Eds.), …
Description/Classification/Threshold: Experiments with Renewable Energy Taxonomy
This is not renewable energy: Nor is this some clever, Magritte-esque meta-commentary on how it is impossible represent or think about renewable energy separate from the technologies…
Voided Spaces: Architectural indices of ravines in Guatemala City
Photo by Jorge Villatoro: Ravine in Zone 3, Guatemala City Deep, canyon-like ravines fracture forty-two percent of Guatemala City. Covered in thick, wet, and dense foliage, these ravines…
Infrastructure after disasters
On October 21, 1868, at approximately eight o’clock in the morning, a major earthquake on the Hayward Fault near Oakland, California shook the Bay Area. The earthquake caused…
Nuclear State, Nuclear Waste
Nuclear State, Nuclear Waste: Emily Simmonds on Canada as a nuclear nation & ongoing colonialism through uranium mining.
Computable Norms: Clinical Practice Guidelines and Digital Infrastructure
I’m a sociocultural anthropologist by training. Until recently, my research focused on environmental issues in Ecuador. Yet, my attempt to address the gaps left by traditional anthropological ap…
The Sacrifice Zones of American “Energy Independence”: Pipeline and Refinery Expansion in the Chicago Region
By Graham Pickren, Roosevelt University § The United States is seemingly on its way to “energy independence.” Since the oil price increases and gas lines of the 1970s shocked…
Is Uncertainty a Useful Concept? Tracking Environmental Damage in the Lao Hydropower Industry
The collapse last week of a major hydropower dam in southern Laos, the Xe Pian-Xe Namnoy, as a tropical storm dumped an unknown, but massive, volume of water into…