Multiple nature-cultures, diverse anthropologies

Ojani, Chakad

doi:10.1080/00141844.2020.1796738

Cited by 1 publication

(4 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…As we saw, the unfulfilled promises about infrastructural change, and the project's subsequent dissolution, eventually became the grounds for renewed expectations about the potential acquisition of a piece of land for the residents. By disseminating residents’ concerns to a wider audience, the fog catchers even helped draw the state in as infrastructure supplier—an unexpected and somewhat contradictory outcome that, as I have shown elsewhere (Ojani 2021), characterized the NGO's activities more broadly.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…However short‐lived, the project had helped instill in audiences the image of an atmosphere abounding with water. Hence the project had served to attract relatively large sums of money, which the NGO was now using to introduce similar imaginaries elsewhere (see Ojani 2021). For the NGO, then, the project was not merely a means to accomplish a clearly delimited goal, but perhaps first and foremost a way of sustaining itself and making a living.…”

Section: Undoing the Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Alejandro's accusations of malpractice and comments about law and corruption spoke of a wider socio‐material reality that the fog catchers had helped render visible and potentially reconfigure (see Ojani 2021; Bonelli and González Gálvez 2018). It was by articulating his concerns about the quality of the relations by which this reality was held together, and thus the materiality of failure, that Alejandro made sense of the fog catchers’ material failure.…”

Section: A Promise Is a Cloudmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Ever more actors have approached this airborne extension of the ocean as a potential water source. Over the course of my fieldwork with Carlos and his colleagues, I often heard the fog catchers being described as an unconventional technology ( tecnología no convencional ), able to effectively stand in for the absence of state infrastructure (Ojani 2021). Although, except for eye‐catching media reports, what often remained of the various projects I encountered in Lima and other parts of coastal Peru was a strong sense of disappointment, not unlike that expressed by Rosa and her son.…”

Section: A Promise Is a Cloudmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

The Promise of Fog Capture

Ojani

2023

Cult. Anthropol.

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article centers on an NGO-induced fog-capture project in Lima, Peru. While presented by the NGO as an alternative water-supply system for residents lacking state infrastructure, the fog catchers ultimately failed to live up to promises about potable water. Yet as fog turned into a material impossibility, the project’s failure yielded a series of new possibilities and expectations, for instance about the potential acquisition of a piece of land. The fog catchers creatively informed other, ongoing processes of improvised urbanization, meaning that the failure became not an end point but a site of emergence whereby the temporality of the fog-capture project folded into parallel rhythms of socio-material transformation. In conclusion, I suggest that the failure be understood not as simply dictated by a larger politico-economic order but as a generative moment through which certain urban configurations became momentarily exposed and could be productively acted on. RESUMEN Este artículo se centra en un proyecto de captura de niebla inducido por una ONG en Lima, Perú. Si bien, la ONG presentó el proyecto como un sistema alternativo de suministro de agua para los residentes que carecen de infraestructura estatal, los atrapanieblas finalmente no cumplieron las promesas sobre el agua potable. Sin embargo, a medida que la niebla se convirtió en una imposibilidad material, el fracaso del proyecto generó una serie de nuevas posibilidades y expectativas, por ejemplo, la adquisición de un terreno. Los atrapanieblas informaron creativamente sobre otros procesos en curso como parte de la urbanización improvisada, lo que significó que la falla no se convirtió en un punto final sino en un sitio de emergencia mediante el cual la temporalidad del proyecto de captura de niebla se desplegó en ritmos paralelos de transformación sociomaterial. En conclusión, sugiero que el fracaso se entienda no simplemente dictada por un orden político-económico más amplio, sino como un momento generativo, a través de la cual, ciertas configuraciones urbanas quedaron momentáneamente expuestas y se pudo actuar productivamente sobre ellas.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Section: Undoing the Projectmentioning

confidence: 99%