Roads : an anthropology of infrastructure and expertise / Penny Harvey, Hannah Knox.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Harvey, Penny, author.

Knox, Hannah, author.

Series:

Expertise (Ithaca, N.Y.).

Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethnology--Peru.

Ethnology.

Roads--Social aspects--Peru.

Roads.

Roads--Political aspects--Peru.

Infrastructure (Economics)--Social aspects--Peru.

Infrastructure (Economics).

Infrastructure (Economics)--Political aspects--Peru.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (264 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Roads matter to people. This claim is central to the work of Penny Harvey and Hannah Knox, who in this book use the example of highway building in South America to explore what large public infrastructural projects can tell us about contemporary state formation, social relations, and emerging political economies.Roads focuses on two main sites: the interoceanic highway currently under construction between Brazil and Peru, a major public/private collaboration that is being realized within new, internationally ratified regulatory standards; and a recently completed one-hundred-kilometer stretch of highway between Iquitos, the largest city in the Peruvian Amazon, and a small town called Nauta, one of the earliest colonial settlements in the Amazon. The Iquitos-Nauta highway is one of the most expensive roads per kilometer on the planet.Combining ethnographic and historical research, Harvey and Knox shed light on the work of engineers and scientists, bureaucrats and construction company officials. They describe how local populations anticipated each of the road projects, even getting deeply involved in questions of exact routing as worries arose that the road would benefit some more than others. Connectivity was a key recurring theme as people imagined the prosperity that will come by being connected to other parts of the country and with other parts of the world. Sweeping in scope and conceptually ambitious, Roads tells a story of global flows of money, goods, and people-and of attempts to stabilize inherently unstable physical and social environments.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

Maps

Introduction. Anthropology, Infrastructure, and Expertise

Part I. Roads As State Space

Chapter 1. Historical Futures

Chapter 2. Integration and Difference

Part II. Construction Practices, Regulatory Devices

Chapter 3. Figures in the Soil

Chapter 4. Health and Safety and the Politics of Safe Living

Chapter 5. Corruption and Public Works

Part III. The Modern State

Chapter 6. Impossible Publics

Chapter 7. Conclusions

Notes

References

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 215 -229) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9780801456459

0801456452

9780801456466

0801456460

OCLC:

1080550105