Infrastructure and interpretation: Meters, dams, and state imagination in Scotland and India

Coleman, Leo

doi:10.1111/amet.12084

Cited by 37 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Simultaneously, I agree with Leo Coleman () who has recently pointed out that Actor‐Network Theory's insistence on tracing material connections, although important as a way to avoid reifying abstractions such as “the state” or “the social,” can become limiting if it means not taking into account the work of interpretation and ascription of meanings to material things by human actors (see Navaro‐Yashin : 163–165). Material things, I contend, exert agency not only through participation in Latourian webs of mediators, but also in other ways, including involvement in affective, hermeneutic, and phenomenological interactions through which human subjectivities, identities, and the sense of belonging are formed.…”

Section: Scrappy Place‐makingsupporting

confidence: 66%

“…To draw an example from my own work, I show elsewhere that in Astana government‐orchestrated construction‐works on a large scale give substance to the reconstruction of the state as a social, imagined, and material reality—a process I call “state‐building through building work” (Laszczkowski :152). But, drawing on Giorgio Agamben's () work, Coleman () argues that the relation between material connections and meaning is “aporetic”—there is no deterministic correspondence between material structures and collective sentiment or identity. Thus, as I demonstrate below, the relationships between the local “community” that emerged at 5 Oktyabrskaya and the state were ambivalent and at times openly antagonistic.…”

Section: Scrappy Place‐makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Through the material work she performed in the dvor, Aleksandra Stepanovna from an outsider became a local leader. Moreover, since material elements are subject to interpretation and held to represent human relations and collectives, “in minor rituals of maintenance … material connections are linked to collective identity” (Coleman :470). Thus, at 5 Oktyabrskaya, a sense of collective local subjecthood crystallized around particular items: the “we” in whose name Aleksandra Stepanovna, for instance, claimed the ownership of the fancy bench.…”

Section: Fixing the Dvormentioning

confidence: 99%

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Scraps, Neighbors, and Committees: Material Things, Place‐Making, and the State in anAstana Apartment Block

Laszczkowski

2015

City & Society

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Drawing on fieldwork in 2008–09, this article focuses on a courtyard (dvor) in a Soviet‐era apartment block in Astana, Kazakhstan. I explore the mundane material maintenance of the courtyard, in particular the use of scraps, as a way to reflect on the relationships between material agency, the formation of locality, and the state. Historically, the courtyard was an urban form through which the Soviet state sought to define its citizenry. In the post‐Soviet period the dvor persists as a space in which citizens' subjectivities and relationships to the state are formed. However, infrastructures fall into disrepair and are haphazardly patched up by residents. I argue that scraps play important roles in the emergence of localities, both enabling and constraining residents' agency. They engender a sense of disconnect between the local community and the state. Simultaneously, scrappiness also means that locality is unstable and ephemeral. Scraps, in general, are an underappreciated element of urbanization; yet they are significant actants in the making and unmaking of social and political configurations.

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Section: Scrappy Place‐makingsupporting

confidence: 66%

Section: Scrappy Place‐makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fixing the Dvormentioning

confidence: 99%

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Scraps, Neighbors, and Committees: Material Things, Place‐Making, and the State in anAstana Apartment Block

Laszczkowski

2015

City & Society

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“…Yet as often as dams have been sites of coercion, I would also argue they have been used to obtain consent (cf. Coleman 2014).…”

Section: Take Down Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

From reactionary modernization to endogenous development: the revolution in hydroelectricity in Venezuela

Kappeler

2017

Dialect Anthropol

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For much of the twentieth century, Venezuela was regarded as one of the developing nations destined to take its place among the affluent societies of the world. The spectacular infrastructure projects sponsored by the Venezuelan government and funded with revenue from the petroleum industry were taken as evidence of progress and the impending arrival of modernity. Showcasing the technical prowess of the Venezuelan state, these projects captured the national imagination and won consent for political elites by calling forth aspirations for total societal transformation. In this article, I explore the reconstruction of hegemonic consent as part of one such project-a hydroelectric dam in the state of Barinas-and the survival of a vision of progress through the built environment, even after the social-economic crisis of the late twentieth century. Drawing on fieldwork in areas near the formerly incomplete project site, I account for what, at first glance, seem to be drastic shifts in local political allegiances and incongruous support for the conservative military dictatorship of Marcos Perez Jimenez and the Bolivarian Government of Hugo Chavez. Suggesting that a high modernist vision of development is a pivot for hegemonic consent, I argue that the completion of this dam after a long hiatus has won the support of a caste of state workers and that the backing of these workers is crucial to the preservation of organized political power.

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“…To imagine language only as a material infrastructure (or to downplay mental categories [Latour ; cf. L. Coleman , 460–61; Kockelman , 417–18]) does not leave much analytic room for the kinds of things that one usually refers to as “language”: meaning, identity, interpretation, or habit. But these aspects of language return to the fore through the ways that speakers create metaphorical or homological resonances between language as a channel and speakers’ capacities for movement and circulation through infrastructures.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Walking like a Christian: Roads, translation, and gendered bodies as religious infrastructure in Papua New Guinea

Handman

2017

American Ethnologist

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Homologies between so‐called soft infrastructures like language and hard ones like roads depend on ethnographically variable metaphors of circulation. In these homologies, speakers understand language to propel or inhibit forms of physical movement, affecting the embodied experiences of transportation or locomotion. In the case of Guhu‐Samane Christians in Papua New Guinea, people focus on language as a kind of infrastructure as they grapple with postcolonial feelings of disconnection from divine powers that were once manifest in a New Testament translation. They channel this sense of disconnection into ongoing complaints about their lack of a vehicular road and the pain of walking, particularly walking like a heavily burdened woman. If a road were built into their valley, this would signal the New Testament's transformation into Christian infrastructure. [infrastructure, language, translation, gender, religious mediation, Christianity, Papua New Guinea] Long sampela hap ol i ting olsem rot bilong kar na toktok i wankain: tupela samting i helpim ol long mekim dispela kain koneksen. Na tu, ol i ting olsem ol kain konekson bilong toktok i ken kamapim koneksen bilong rot na senisim pasin bilong wokabaut. Ol Kristen manmeri long Waria veli i save tok: taim ol lain bilong SIL i tanim tok bilong Nupela Testamen i go long tok ples Guhu‐Samane, dispela em i opim rot i go long heven. Tasol nau sampela lain long hap i wari olsem dispela rot i pas na God i no ken harim tok bilong ol. Ol i save tok olsem long wanem planti yia i go pinis na God i no helpim ol long wanpela rot bilong kar i go insait long Waria veli. Dispela ol lain i wok long singaut long pen bilong wokabaut long lek tasol na ol i sori long ol mama i karim draipela bilum pulap long kaikai. Sapos God i wokim rot i go insait long veli, orait dispela em i mak olsem rot bilong Nupela Testamen i stap op yet na rot bilong Kristen toktok inap long kamapim rot bilong kar. [ol rot samting, toktok, wok bilong tanim tok, pasin bilong man na pasin bilong meri, koneksen wantaim God, ol Kristen, Papua Niugini]

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Infrastructure and interpretation: Meters, dams, and state imagination in Scotland and India

Cited by 37 publications

References 32 publications

Scraps, Neighbors, and Committees: Material Things, Place‐Making, and the State in anAstana Apartment Block

Scraps, Neighbors, and Committees: Material Things, Place‐Making, and the State in anAstana Apartment Block

From reactionary modernization to endogenous development: the revolution in hydroelectricity in Venezuela

Walking like a Christian: Roads, translation, and gendered bodies as religious infrastructure in Papua New Guinea

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