{"title":"BUMPY ROADS, DUSTY AIR: Gadbad and the Sensate Ecologies of Driving Work in Contemporary Mumbai","authors":"TARINI BEDI","doi":"10.14506/ca38.1.04","DOIUrl":"10.14506/ca38.1.04","url":null,"abstract":"<p>I decouple the commonly discussed ecological destruction and unsustainability wrought by cars from a discussion of what life lived and sustained around automobiles looks like. Through fieldwork with hereditary Muslim taxi drivers in Mumbai, I look at urban ecological relations with those who work in what I call sensate ecologies. A sensate-ecologies approach connects labor and urban ecology and argues for a collective rather than an individual subject of urban theory. What I describe here as drivers' sensate ecological relations with a difficult city—a condition that is usually considered ecologically and infrastructurally unsustainable—calls into question assumptions about ecological damage and precarious urban life. By analyzing taxi driving as relational, sensate work. rather than as precarious labor, I argue that urban sensate ecologies produce expertise for hereditary drivers that sustain over generations. I conclude that even unsustainable ecological onslaughts of automobility produce coexistence and sustainable social and sensate relations.</p>","PeriodicalId":51423,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Anthropology","volume":"38 1","pages":"60-86"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.14506/ca38.1.04","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47097165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Predatory Fleas, Sterile Flies, and the Settlers","authors":"Liron Shani","doi":"10.14506/ca38.1.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14506/ca38.1.05","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In this essay, I follow predatory fleas, sterile flies, and other insects, as well as farmers, across the Arava/Arabah, an arid desert region in southern Israel/Palestine, south of the Dead Sea, marked by harsh environmental conditions. Following a four-year ethnographic study, I examine the ecological and political impacts of Zionist settlement in the area and the fluidity of definitions of alien/native species. I use the term agricultural infrastructure to describe the network of connections that make agriculture possible—wells, pipes, and “beneficial” insects—as part of a theoretical framework that integrates both the human and non-human in the Anthropocene era, while also examining the challenges posed by environmental and agricultural transformation. Agricultural infrastructure is shown in this piece as a political enterprise: it establishes hierarchical boundaries between communities and strengthens land control while maintaining and establishing boundaries between humans and non-humans, often resulting in compounding ecological harm. Yet the use of the term agricultural infrastructure within a given context of settler colonialism contributes a more nuanced approach than dichotomous contrasts between alien versus native, settler versus local.\u0000\u0000תקציר\u0000\u0000במאמר זה אני עוקב אחר פרעושים טורפים, זבובים מעוקרים וחרקים אחרים, כמו גם אחרי החקלאים עצמם, ברחבי הערבה, אזור מדברי צחיח בדרום ישראל/פלסטין, דרומית לים המלח, המאופיין בתנאי סביבה קשים. בעזרת מחקר אתנוגרפי בן ארבע שנים, אני בוחן את ההשפעות האקולוגיות והפוליטיות של ההתיישבות באזור ואת נזילות ההגדרות של מינים זרים/ילידים. אני משתמש במונח “תשתית חקלאית” כדי לתאר את רשת הקשרים המאפשרים חקלאות - קידוחים, צינורות וחרקים “מועילים” - כחלק ממסגרת תיאורטית המשלבת הן את האנושי והן את הלא אנושי בעידן האנתרופוקן, יחד עם בחינת האתגרים שמציבים השינוי הסביבתי והחקלאי. “תשתית חקלאית” מוצגת במאמר זה כמפעל פוליטי: היא קובעת גבולות היררכיים בין קהילות ומחזקת את השליטה בקרקע תוך שמירה וביסוס של גבולות אנושיים והלא אנושיים, מה שגורם לרוב לפגיעה אקולוגית מורכבת. אך השימוש ב”תשתית חקלאית” בהקשר נתון של קולוניאליזם התיישבותי מאפשר גישה יותר ניואנסית מאשר ניגודים דיכוטומיים כמו זר מול יליד, או מתיישב מול מקומי.\u0000","PeriodicalId":51423,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43708757","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Of Feral and Obedient Cows","authors":"Valentina Bonifacio","doi":"10.14506/ca38.1.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14506/ca38.1.02","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In the Paraguayan Chaco, cattle evoke images of power, prosperity, and celebration, but they also trigger one of the quickest deforestation processes in the world. The presence of cattle in the region has deep historical roots, dating back to the beginning of the colonization process, when the establishment of a double economy based on cattle ranching and the tannin industry dispossessed indigenous people of their territories. Through a historical and ethnographic analysis of the Carlos Casado tannin company, I suggest considering domestication and ferality—and their local related idioms (amansar, anestesiar, sagua’a, señuelo, carne)—as inter-species categories crucial for understanding processes of colonization from a local perspective. In particular, I claim that practices and idioms related to the (un)domestication domain have been used to make sense of ethnic, class, and power relationships, as well as of practices of resistance. \u0000\u0000RESUMEN\u0000\u0000En el Chaco paraguayo, el ganado bovino evoca imágenes de poder, prosperidad y abundancia. Pero, a la vez, es la causa de uno de los procesos de deforestación más rápidos del mundo. La presencia de ganado en la región tiene profundas raíces históricas y se remonta al principio del proceso de la colonización, cuando el establecimiento de una doble economía basada en la ganadería y la industria del tanino despojó a los pueblos indígenas de sus tierras. A través de un análisis histórico y etnográfico de la compañía taninera Carlos Casado S.A., propongo considerar a la domesticación y a lo asilvestrado—en sus distintas declinaciones: amansar, anestesiar, sagua’a, señuelo, carne—como categorías interespecíficas fundamentales para entender los procesos de colonización desde una perspectiva local. En particular, sostengo que las prácticas y los términos relacionados con el campo semántico de la (de)domesticación fueron utilizados para poner en escena y conceptualizar relaciones étnicas, de clase y de poder, como así también prácticas de resistencia.\u0000","PeriodicalId":51423,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49083677","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Infrastructural Decay","authors":"Ekin Kurtiç","doi":"10.14506/ca38.1.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14506/ca38.1.07","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000A growing ethnographic literature attends to maintenance and repair practices in the face of decay and ruination. This article explores the forms of decay that become an integral part of infrastructure maintenance. In Turkey’s Çoruh Basin, hydroelectric dam constructions lead to a concern about the landscape’s erosive character, which requires foresters’ practices of watershed rehabilitation in the uplands to protect the dams against sediment accumulation in the reservoirs. The work of repairing ecologies for the long-term maintenance of dams, I contend, is undergirded by the gradual decay of another maintenance labor—that is, the villagers’ arduous practices of tending landscape through farming and husbandry. Through an ethnographic study of how foresters and villagers experience the landscape under rehabilitation, this article offers a novel anthropological analytical perspective that foregrounds the continuum between maintaining and decaying, tracing the role of labored landscapes in this continuum. I argue that maintenance practices, while intending to counter decay, entail other forms of decay. \u0000\u0000ÖZET\u0000\u0000Giderek büyüyen bir etnografik literatür, çöküş, yıkım ve tahribat süreçlerinin karşısında bakım ve onarım pratiklerine odaklanmaktadır. Bu makale, altyapı bakımının bütünleyici bir parçası haline gelen çöküş biçimlerine odaklanmaktadır. Türkiye’nin Çoruh Havzası’ndaki hidroelektrik baraj yapımları sürecinde arazinin erozyona yatkın yapısı bir mesele olarak ortaya çıkmıştır. Bu mesele, barajları rezervuarlardaki sediment birikimine karşı korumak için ormancıların yüksek kesimlerde havza rehabilitasyonu çalışmaları yapmalarını gerektirmiştir. Barajların uzun vadeli bakımı için yapılan ekoloji onarım çalışmalarının, başka bir bakım emeğinin—köylülerin tarım ve hayvancılık yoluyla araziye bakma pratiklerinin—zamanla gerçekleşen çöküşü tarafından desteklendiğini ileri sürüyorum. Ormancıların ve köylülerin rehabilitasyon altındaki coğrafyayı nasıl deneyimlediklerine odaklanan etnografik araştırmam sonucunda bu makale, bakım ve çöküş süreçleri arasındaki devamlılığı ön plana alan ve emekle şekillenen arazilerin bu devamlılıktaki rollerini takip eden yeni bir antropolojik analitik perspektif önermektedir. Bakım pratiklerinin, çöküş ve tahribatı engellemeyi amaçlarken, başka çöküş biçimleri içerdiğini iddia ediyorum.\u0000","PeriodicalId":51423,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Anthropology","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41597160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"“Life is a Gamble”","authors":"Anna Reumert","doi":"10.14506/ca38.1.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14506/ca38.1.06","url":null,"abstract":"This article foregrounds the returns of migration by following young migrant workers to Lebanon and back to subsistence farming communities in western Sudan during a time of revolution and economic crisis in both countries. Their labor and the returns of it connect these two seemingly distinct zones of labor and production in a transregional economy, linking East Africa to the Middle East. In this cross-border economy, the search for work through mobility has become a point of value extraction by brokers and border guards, and at the same time a practice of gendered self-validation for male migrants. In Sudan, migrants and brokers both refer to this practice as a gamble, mughamara. Proposing mughamara as an ethnographic concept of mobility, I show how young migrants use this term to validate themselves through migration. Comparing their experiences to Sudanese migrants who worked in Lebanon decades before them, I show how the youth’s presentation of mobility as a necessary gamble with life reveals an underlying generational experience of crisis and the foreclosure of class mobility. In a political and socioeconomic context where migrant workers often feel devalued in and by labor, mobility is presented as their only way forward—as well as their ticket home.","PeriodicalId":51423,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-02-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41662338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Language and social relations","authors":"J. Eller","doi":"10.4324/9780429197710-4","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429197710-4","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51423,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Anthropology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2020-05-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49309529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}