CASCA/SANA2016 panel CFP: Infrastructures:Materializing Publics and Persons in Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts

Infrastructures: Materializing Publics and Persons in Colonial and
Postcolonial Contexts

Jean Mitchell, University of Prince Edward Island
Sandra Widmer, York University

There is growing interest among anthropologists in examining the
socialities, effects and affects of infrastructure(s). Their
material-semiotics engage environments, persons, technologies and
objects that shape everyday lives. Infrastructures can be sites of
nation-building that offer possibilities for citizenship in contexts
of colonial and postcolonial governance. Promises of infrastructure
enroll people in particular forms of politics aimed at better futures
(Hetherington 2014). Infrastructures also chart the changing relations
of power with "the thinning of the state" in neoliberalism (Allison
and Piot 2012). This panel explores infrastructures as ways of
understanding postcolonial social formations and forms of economic
distribution. You are invited to consider how infrastructures both
connect and fragment social worlds in colonial and postcolonial
contexts. Papers could consider topics such as: Public/private
infrastructures; Food systems; Medical care; Emergency preparedness;
Public health surveillance; Cell phone infrastructures;
Indigenous/state relationships, Energy conflicts.
Please send abstracts to mjmitchell@upei and swidmer@yorku.ca by January 31.