A light lunch will be served and work will be pre-circulated – please RSVP by end of day April 20 if you plan to attend.
This wo rkshop will focus on the concept of "infrastructural biography" as a resear ch method for examining infrastructure in its social\, environmental\, poli tical\, economic\, and material contexts. Focusing on the visible transform ations of specific infrastructural forms over time (homes\, schools\, roads \, buildings\, bridges\, pipelines\, transmission lines\, for example)\, of fers an entrée into understanding sociopolitical complexity and change for the people who live with these elements of the built environment. Participa nts will read some of Sara Shneiderman's existing work and listen to a pres entation of material from one chapter of her current ethnography in process \, Restructuring Life: Conflict\, Disaster\, and Transformation in Nepal \, which uses infrastructural biography as a framing concept. Discussio n will be focused on how this approach might be useful across disciplines.< /span>
In the presentation\, Shneiderman will focu s on the infrastructural biography of hydropower transmission towers in rur al Nepal to address the question: How does hydropower development reshape l andscapes and livelihoods far away from the flow of water itself? Much crit ical scholarship has addressed riverine environmental impacts and the often -devastating outcomes of dam-related displacement for downstream communitie s\, as well as the mobilization of resistance to these developments. Her re search builds on such work to ask how the transnational flows of materialit y\, expertise\, and capital that accompany large-scale infrastructural deve lopment can transform rural communities situated along lines of hydropower transmission at a distance from power-generating rivers and dams themselves . Shneiderman presents a case study of an Indigenous community in Dolakha\, Nepal\, whose fields and forests have over the last decade become host to lines of transmission from multiple hydropower projects that originate near the northern border between Nepal and China’s Tibetan Autonomous Region (T AR). At source\, these power-generating installations serve as meeting poin ts for people\, ideas\, and things from all over the Himalayan region\, as Chinese and Indian engineers and administrators\, Tibetan pilgrims and Nepa li contract labourers\, mingle in unexpected ways to produce the actual flo w of water. The resulting energy that flows through the network of towers t o reach its final destination—usually India or Bangladesh— brings diverse c ommunities along the way into relation with the material\, political\, and economic transformations of hydropower development. The case study explores how community members living along lines of transmission conceptualize the ir own geographical and social location in relation to the ongoing transfor mations that hydropower development brings.
Sara Shneiderman is Ivan Head South-North IDRC Chair and Associate Professor in the Department of An thropology and School of Public Policy & Global Affairs at UBC. She is a so ciocultural anthropologist who has worked in Nepal and the Himalayas for ov er 30 years. Her recent research focuses on post-disaster reconstruction an d infrastructural development\; she has recently co-edited the volume "Infr astructures of Democracy: Politics and Processes of Road Building in Rural Nepal."
Funded by th e European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the aut hor(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European U nion. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
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