Anthropology and Infrastructures

Infrastructures can refer to both material and institutional structures that enable and/or restrict people’s actions. In addition, they can be manifestations of power, they affect social relations and understandings of the environment and have both intended and unintended consequences. People seldom pay much attention to infrastructures unless particular infrastructures do not function properly causing hardships in everyday lives. In other words, infrastructures are often invisible, yet necessary.

‘Infrastructure’ has become increasingly visible as a ‘site’ of ethnographic and theoretical attention. Rather than considering their technological characteristics, anthropologists focus on how people use, understand, and experience infrastructures, the effects they have on people’s lives and the political struggles that revolve around infrastructural projects. In addition, anthropologists investigate the meanings people give to infrastructures and the entanglements of hopes, fears and politics related to infrastructural projects.

In this workshop, scholars are invited to discuss the significance of infrastructures in their various ongoing research projects. We invite the participants to give 5-10-minute-long oral presentations in which they elaborate on why and how particular infrastructures are important in their studies. The aim of the workshop is to discuss infrastructures from various angles showing the richness of the topic and to elaborate on why it is important to look at infrastructures from an anthropological perspective.

We recommend participants to read in advance two articles (see attachments). The workshop is chaired by Professor Penny Harvey. In the beginning she will present the articles and the wider debates that surround them.

If you want to present in the workshop, please send a summary of your research with reflections on how you currently use, or on how you think you could deploy an ‘infrastructural perspective’ (maximum 400 words) to dimitri.ollikainen [at] tuni.fi by April 11th, 2022. The number of participants will be limited; the selection will be made within a week from the deadline.

Members of the Finnish Anthropological Society are prioritized as presenters but others can present if there is space. Instructions on how to join the Finnish Anthropological Society can be found here http://www.antropologinenseura.fi/en/membership/

You are welcome to participate also without presenting a paper but prior registration is needed.

The event is organized by the Finnish Anthropological Society and the social anthropologists of Tampere University in collaboration with the projects Governance and Grieving: Disappearing Migrants and Emergent Politics, Tampere University and New regimes of commodification and state formation on the resource frontier of Southeast Asia, University of Helsinki

Funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation

Event on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/461944285664360

Further information: dimitri.ollikainen [at] tuni.fi