Imagining the Highway: Anticipating Infrastructural and Environmental Change in Belize

Haines, Sophie

doi:10.1080/00141844.2017.1282974

Cited by 16 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 58 publications

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“…In a somewhat different way, certain work on infrastructure seems to doing something similar, focusing on how the confluence of morality, affect and materiality fashions human subjects not as freely choosing individuals but rather as collaborators in redistributive projects that house, feed, clothe and transport the young, the old and those otherwise unable to work – but often at the cost of savage inequalities. Here, I am thinking of a lively dialogue between Venkatesan, Bear, Harvey, Lazar, Rival and Simone on infrastructure () – as well as Haines’ () work on the ‘affective power of infrastructure’. In a very different way, Van Daele's () work on food's status as a ‘holographic condensation of life’ in Sri Lankan ritual seems to develop similar lines of thought about persons and their relations to collectivities in the contemporary world.…”

Section: The Rise Of Networked Personhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

European social anthropology in 2018: an increasingly recursive public

Hughes

2019

Soc Anthropol

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In 2018, social anthropology finds itself increasingly concerned with its technical, legal and political conditions of possibility. The long‐term effects of austerity, financialisation and the technological transformation of media on teaching, research and publishing have led to intense struggles over the labour and property regimes underpinning the discipline. In responding to these challenges, anthropologists seem to be re‐conceptualising their own personhood and labour through the diverse conceptualisations of their interlocutors. However, it is also important to remember what makes social anthropology and its unique professional challenges but a small facet of a larger human condition. By way of conclusion, I offer kinship (the public's constitutive other) as one potential means of grappling with the limitations of social anthropology's own publicity.

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Section: The Rise Of Networked Personhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

European social anthropology in 2018: an increasingly recursive public

Hughes

2019

Soc Anthropol

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“…Scientists and practitioners attributed political apathy about future resource pressures to a false sense of security related to Belize being a country with abundant water and low population density, but also to incentives for politicians to maintain discretion over resource allocation and keep debates about distribution out of the public sphere, particularly given connections between water and land, which is of fundamental importance in Belizean politics (Haines, 2012(Haines, , 2018Grandia, 2009;Wainwright, 2008;Wilk, 1997). Thus, there was doubt that even with data collected, made available and translated into policy, there would still be the problem of enforcementagain, frequently described as typical of Belize, or the Caribbean (see also Medeiros et al, 2011).…”

Section: Political Data Ecologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reckoning Resources

Haines

2019

S&TS

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Participants in Belize’s water sector encounter challenges in identifying and living within shifting environments, and in conducting the work of expectation given ambiguities in rainfall patterns, historical records, institutional resources and political interests. Policymakers, scientists and practitioners generate and organise different kinds of foreknowledge as they anticipate future quantities, qualities and distribution of water, amid questions about the patterning of expertise and the nature of water as a resource. I present three ethnographic vignettes to address: the navigation of nonknowledge in water policy implementation; the frictions that arise in modelling workshops where trainees generate data-driven maps of future environments; and the situated sensing of environmental change. Building on a concept of ‘reckoning’ that highlights cross-cutting technical, relational, political and affective dimensions of meaning-making, I situate these foreknowledge practices in the socio-material contexts of environmental perception, socio-economic development, and the political lives of anticipation.

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“…Road infrastructure development such as the proposed superhighway contribute to urbanization by attracting land speculators and settlers (Anderson, 2017;Haines, 2017) which in conjunction with the highway would have devastating impacts on ecosystem functioning and threaten biodiversity (Riley et al, 2005;Pauchard et al, 2006;McKinney, 2008;Heinrichs and Pauchard, 2015). For instance, the Cross River National Park harbors roughly 20% of the planet's butterfly species which if constructed the superhighway would threaten.…”

Section: The Cross River Superhighwaymentioning

confidence: 99%

Road Expansion and the Fate of Africa's Tropical Forests

et al. 2017

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The tropical forests of Africa are experiencing unprecedented changes as a result of a rapid proliferation of roads and other infrastructure. These projects are dramatically increasing access to relatively unexploited regions, particularly in the greater Congo Basin. We highlight some of the most important new projects and describe in detail an ongoing debate about a particular proposed development, the Cross River Superhighway in Nigeria. The scale and pace of new transportation projects, and the profound environmental changes they could bring, underscore a dire need for proactive land-use planning, capacity building, and environmental assessment in the nations of Equatorial Africa. It is no exaggeration to suggest that, unless carefully managed to ensure sustainability, the spate of planned and ongoing projects could irreparably diminish the forests and wildlife populations of Africa's most biologically diverse regions.

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Imagining the Highway: Anticipating Infrastructural and Environmental Change in Belize

Cited by 16 publications

References 58 publications

European social anthropology in 2018: an increasingly recursive public

European social anthropology in 2018: an increasingly recursive public

Reckoning Resources

Road Expansion and the Fate of Africa's Tropical Forests

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