In the Sand: Water, Land, and Infrastructure in Informality
Angela Storey, University of Arizona § Milk crates are a common sight when walking the narrow paths of informal settlements in Khayelitsha, a Cape Town suburb where more…
Tag: infrastructure
The Anthropology of the Built Environment: What Can Environmental Anthropology Learn from Infrastructure Studies (and Vice Versa)?
*A commentary on Part I of our Engagement thematic series, The Nature of Infrastructure. By Ashley Carse, Vanderbilt University § I am honored to have an opportunity to…
Seminar: Indigenous Media 2016
Again, I have the pleasure to teach the Seminar “Indigenous Media” for the MA Program in Visual and Media Anthropology at the Free University Berlin. Find below a…
An “Ecological Path” in Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park: On the Reflexivity of Oil Infrastructure
By Peter Taber, Arizona State University § Satellite imagery of a small section of the Block 31 road entering the Apaika platform area, taken in 2013. Imagery courtesy of…
Coming to #SCA2016: Infrastructures of Collaboration
I am excited to announce with my co-organizer, Amy Robbins, that our panel for the biennial meeting of the Society for Cultural Anthropology has been accepted and is…
Silo as System: Infrastructural Interventions into the Political Economy of Wheat
Ateya Khorakiwala, Harvard University § This post underscores how the seemingly straightforward and yet iconic American silo evolved into a different kind of storage infrastructure when it encountered…
On Rust
By Stephanie McCallum, University of California, Santa Cruz § Recent scholarship in anthropology has addressed infrastructure not in its fully functioning capabilities, but as it falls apart (e.g. Chu…
Tactics of Power and Empowerment in Knowledge-Making Infrastructures
By Kirk Jalbert, Manager of Community Based Research & Engagement, FracTracker Alliance and Visiting Research Professor, Center for Science, Technology and Society, Drexel University § Energy extr…
Judith Beyer & Felix Girke: Naypyitaw: Rescaling materiality, capitalizing space
Since 2012, we have carried out twelve months of urban anthropological research in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city and its economic and cultural center. Until February 2016, however, we…
Philosophical lab infrastructure
The short version of this post: Philosophers have practically no lab infrastructure. The long version: Coming back to my research about philosophy departments in France, I was recently reading an…
Natural Infrastructures: Sediment, Science, and the Future of Southeast Louisiana
By Monica Patrice Barra, The Graduate Center, City University of New York § Losing a football field an hour “Historical and projected coastal Louisiana land changes: 1978-2050” (www.lacoas…
Between Obsolescence and Necessity: The Abiding Nature of Dhalao Infrastructures in Urban India
By Aman Luthra, Johns Hopkins University § If you happen to frequent the broad tree-lined avenues of Chanakyapuri—an upscale neighborhood in New Delhi, India dominated by diplomatic missions and…
Who is Going to Fix the Road to Europe?
Road M15 near Reni, Ukraine in October, 2013. Photo courtesy Simon Schlegel When protests erupted in Ukraine in late November 2013, I was conducting fieldwork in southern Bessarabia,…
Infrastructure as Iron Cage
Weber’s metaphor of the iron cage is one of the most famous in all of sociology. It’s certainly stuck with me: I keep a bookmark in my copy…
Paper: Interactive technology enhanced learning for social science students
Budka, P., Schallert, C., Mader, E. 2011. Interactive technology enhanced learning for social science students. In M. E. Auer & M. Huba (Eds.), Proceedings 14th International Conference on…
Call for Posts: The Nature of Infrastructure
The concept of infrastructure draws attention to as-yet-unseen synergies between technology, culture, and materiality. What does this concept have to offer environmental anthropology? While we can saf…
Call for Papers: Infrastructures of Collaboration: Lessons Learned from Collaborative Failures
Call for Papers for the Society for Cultural Anthropology Biennial Meeting Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Friday, May 13-Saturday, May 14, 2016 Conference Call for Papers Organizers Angela VandenBro…
“Free Basics” – does it really matter to the poor in Panchagrami?
Image Courtesy: Wikimedia Commons: Facebook The launch of Facebook’s ‘Free Basics’, a rebranding of internet.org, has been a hot topic in India for the past few months as Facebook tries to…
Article: From marginalization to self-determined participation
Budka, P. 2015. From marginalization to self-determined participation: Indigenous digital infrastructures and technology appropriation in Northwestern Ontario’s remote communities. Journal des a…
Vortrag: Indigene Modernität durch digitale Medientechnologien?
Budka, P. 2015. Indigene Modernität durch digitale Medientechnologien? Infrastrukturentwicklung, Technologieaneignung und soziokulturelle Praktiken im Nordwestlichen Ontario, Kanada. Vortrag im Colloq…
Paper: Indigenous futures and digital infrastructures
Budka, P. 2014. Indigenous futures and digital infrastructures: How First Nation communities connect themselves in Northwestern Ontario. Paper at “13th Biennial Conference of the European Association …
Check Out the New Anthropod Podcast on Open Access
I really enjoyed listening to the new Anthropod podcast on open access in anthropology. Focusing on the move of Cultural Anthropology to an open access model, hosts Bascom…