Over the past year I have slowly started working on an ethnographic project around Sweden's national strategy to increase its infrastructural presence in outer space. I recently outlined my interests in a short text that has now been published in the Swedish anthropology blog antroperspektiv. The text, titled Infrastructuralizing outer space, un-earthing anthropology, is also … Continue reading Infrastructuralizing outer space, un-earthing anthropology
Category: all
The (ontological) politics of fog capture
A significant part of my PhD fieldwork in coastal Peru was spent with a geographer whom I call Sergio. Over a period of several months, Sergio tried to get at the locations in Lima's peripheries where fog was such that it could be captured and contained as volumes of water. In this article, I describe … Continue reading The (ontological) politics of fog capture
Anthropology of infrastructures
Last year (2020) I was invited to write a chapter on infrastructure for the International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. The totality of this burgeoning field stretches well beyond the scope of my awareness, and I have surely left out several important gems, as well as the most recent research. In this piece I pull together a … Continue reading Anthropology of infrastructures
Aeolian politics and the duograph
Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer have crafted two eloquent accounts of the turbulent, aeolian politics that unfolded during their 16-month-long field research in Mexico’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec, between 2009 and 2013. A gap in the Sierra Madre mountain range forms an extraordinary wind tunnel in the isthmus, rendering the region a convenient site for renewable … Continue reading Aeolian politics and the duograph
Atmospheric failure
Atmospheric failure is my own contribution to the Allegralab thematic thread When Things don't Hold: Anthropologies of Failure, Breakdown, and Dysfunction. A pdf is available here. This short text revolves around what was described to me as a "failed" fog capture initiative in Lima, Peru, and it focuses on the way moments of failure may … Continue reading Atmospheric failure
When things don’t hold
I'm very happy to announce the publication of the introductory text to When things don't hold, a thematic thread for Allegra Laboratory which I edited together with my two friends Rozafa Berisha and Laura Mafizzoli. Based on a symposium we organised back in February 2020, the thread draws together several of the excellent papers presented over … Continue reading When things don’t hold
Multiple nature-cultures, diverse anthropologies
My review of Casper Bruun Jensen and Atsuro Morita's edited volume is out. The book is titled Multiple Nature-Cultures, Diverse Anthropologies and was published in 2019, but previously available as a special issue in Social Analysis. I really enjoyed the chapters, particularly the ones by Swanson, Walford, Kasuga, Skrydstrup, and the editors themselves. Perhaps because I felt these … Continue reading Multiple nature-cultures, diverse anthropologies
Failure, breakdown, dysfunction
I recently co-organized a PhD and early-career symposium at the University of Manchester, together with my friends Laura Mafizzoli and Rozafa Berisha. We called it When Things don't Hold: Anthropologies of Failure, Breakdown, and Dysfunction, and we invited 9 participants to come and present their work. We were also lucky to have Madeleine Reeves (Manchester) … Continue reading Failure, breakdown, dysfunction
How materials matter
My review of Graeme Were's book How materials matter: design, innovation and materiality in the Pacific has just been published in Social Anthropology. Read it here or message me for a pdf. Here's a sneak peek: "Recent new materialisms and nonhuman turns have brought materiality and materials to the centre of anthropological attention. How materials matter … Continue reading How materials matter
Attunements to fog
A short piece I wrote has just been published as a part of the brilliant NatureCulture, More-Than-Human Worlds blog series. It's titled Attunements to fog: Capture as an idiom for more-than-human entanglements, and it is based on my fieldwork among fog-oasis conservationists and fog capture enthusiasts in Peru. In it I try to draw parallels between … Continue reading Attunements to fog
