Roads and the powerful sense of mobility that they promise carry us back and forth between the sweeping narratives of globalisation, and the specific, tangible materialities of particular times and places. Indeed, despite the fact that roads might, by comparison with the sparkling agility of virtual technologies, appear to be grounded in twentieth century industrial political economy they could arguably be taken as the paradigmatic material infrastructure of the twenty-first century, supporting both the information society (in the ever increasing circulation of commoditized goods and labour), and the extractive economies of developing countries which the production and reproduction of such goods and labour depends. Roads and Anthropology is the first collection of road ethnographies, edited by two pioneers in the anthropological explorations of infrastructures, the essays published in this book aim to pave the way for that rising field of anthropological research. This book was published as a special issue of Mobilities.

Roads and the powerful sense of mobility that they promise carry us back and forth between the sweeping narratives of globalisation, and the specific, tangible materialities of particular times and places. Indeed, despite the fact that roads might, by comparison with the sparkling agility of virtual technologies, appear to be grounded in twentieth century industrial political economy they could arguably be taken as the paradigmatic material infrastructure of the twenty-first century, supporting both the information society (in the ever increasing circulation of commoditized goods and labour), and the extractive economies of developing countries which the production and reproduction of such goods and labour depends. Roads and Anthropology is the first collection of road ethnographies, edited by two pioneers in the anthropological explorations of infrastructures, the essays published in this book aim to pave the way for that rising field of anthropological research. This book was published as a special issue of Mobilities.

Roads and the powerful sense of mobility that they promise carry us back and forth between the sweeping narratives of globalisation, and the specific, tangible materialities of particular times and places. Indeed, despite the fact that roads might, by comparison with the sparkling agility of virtual technologies, appear to be grounded in twentieth century industrial political economy they could arguably be taken as the paradigmatic material infrastructure of the twenty-first century, supporting both the information society (in the ever increasing circulation of commoditized goods and labour), and the extractive economies of developing countries on which the production and reproduction of such goods and labour depends. Roads and Anthropology is the first collection of road ethnographies, edited by two pioneers in the anthropological explorations of infrastructures, the essays published in the book aim to pave the way for this rising field of anthropological research. This book was published as a special issue of Mobilities.

This open access book traces the development of landscapes along the 414-kilometer China-Laos Railway, one of the first infrastructure projects implemented under China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and which is due for completion at the end of 2021. Written from the perspective of landscape architecture and intended for planners and related professionals engaged in the development and conservation of these landscapes, this book provides history, planning pedagogy and interdisciplinary framing for working alongside the often-opaque planning, design and implementation processes of large-scale infrastructure. It complicates simplistic notions of development and urbanization frequently reproduced in the Laos-China frontier region. Many of the projects and sites investigated in this book are recent "firsts" in Laos: Laos's first wildlife sanctuary for trafficked endangered species, its first botanical garden and its first planting plan for a community forest. Most often the agents and accomplices of neoliberal development, the planning and design professions, including landscape architecture, have little dialogue with either the mainstream natural sciences or critical social sciences that form the discourse of projects in Laos and comparable contexts. Covering diverse conceptions and issues of development, including cultural and scientific knowledge exchanges between Laos and China, nature tourism, connectivity and new town planning, this book also features nine planning proposals for Laos generated through this research initiative since the railway's groundbreaking in 2016. Each proposal promotes a wider "landscape approach" to development and deploys landscape architecture's spatial and ecological acumen to synthesize critical development studies with the planner's capacity, if not naive predilection, to intervene on the ground. Ultimately, this book advocates the cautious engagement of the professionally oriented built-environment disciplines, such as regional planning, civil engineering and landscape architecture, with the landscapes of development institutions and environmental NGOs.

This volume offers a multidisciplinary engagement with the work of Tim Ingold. Involved in a critical long-term exploration of the relationships between human beings, organisms, and their environment, Ingold has become one of the most influential, innovative, and prolific writers in anthropology in recent decades. His work transcends established academic and disciplinary boundaries and his thinking continues to have a significant impact on numerous areas of research and other intellectual and artistic spheres. The contributions to this book are drawn from several fields, including social anthropology, archaeology, rock art studies, philosophy, and science and technology studies. The chapters critically engage with Ingold’s approaches and ideas in relation to a variety of case studies that include the exploration of Australian rock art, electricity in Pakistan, Spanish farmhouses and sensory dimensions of educational practices. Emphasising the importance of dialogue and debate, there is also a response to the contributions by Tim Ingold himself. The volume will appeal to a wide range of audiences and provide new avenues of theoretically informed anthropological exploration into the many realities and expressions of human life.

This journal has been discontinued. Any issues are available to purchase separately.

Highways, Byways, and Road Systems in the Pre-Modern World reveals the significance and interconnectedness of early civilizations’ pathways. This international collection of readings providing a description and comparative analysis of several sophisticated systems of transport and communication across pre-modern cultures. Offers a comparative analysis of several sophisticated systems of overland transport and communication networks across pre-modern cultures Addresses the burgeoning interest in connectivity and globalization in ancient history, archaeology, anthropology, and recent work in network analysis Explores the societal, cultural, and religious implications of various transportation networks around the globe Includes contributions from an international team of scholars with expertise on pre-modern India, China, Japan, the Americas, North Africa, Europe, and the Near East Structured to encourage comparative thinking across case studies

What kinds of expertise and knowledge relate to electricity, and where is the space for alternative voices? How can the new roles for electricity in social and cultural life be acknowledged? How can we speak about ‘it’ in its own right while acknowledging that electricity is not one thing? This book re-describes electricity and its infrastructures using insights from anthropology and science and technology studies, raising fascinating questions about the contemporary world and its future. Through ethnographic studies of bulbs, bicycles, dams, power grids and much more, the contributors shed light on practices that are often overlooked, showing how electricity is enacted in multiple ways. Electrifying Anthropology moves beyond the idea of electricity as an immovable force, and instead offers a set of potential trajectories for thinking about electricity and its effects in contemporary society. With new contributions on an emerging area of research, this timely collection will be of value to students and scholars of anthropology, science and technology studies, geography and engineering.

The realities of the globalized world have revolutionized traditional concepts of culture, community, and identity—so how do applied social scientists use complicated, fluid new ideas such as translocality and ethnoscape to solve pressing human problems? In this book, leading scholar/practitioners survey the development of different subfields over at least two decades, then offer concrete case studies to show how they have incorporated and refined new concepts and methods. After an introduction synthesizing anthropological practice, key theoretical concepts, and ethnographic methods, chapters examine the arenas of public health, community development, finance, technology, transportation, gender, environment, immigration, aging, and child welfare. An innovative guide to joining dynamic theoretical concepts with on-the-ground problem solving, this book will be of interest to practitioners from a wide range of disciplines who work on social change, as well as an excellent addition to graduate and undergraduate courses.

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.