Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise (Expertise: Cultures and Technologies of Knowledge)

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. 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. 0'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. 0Combining 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 Roads matter to people. This claim in 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 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 Roads 1 Contents 6 Preface 8 List of Abbreviations 16 Introduction: Anthropology, Infrastructure, and Expertise 24 PART I. ROADS AS STATE SPACE: PAST DESIRES AND FUTURE IMAGINARIES 42 1. Historical Futures 44 2. Integration and Difference 75 PART II. CONSTRUCTION PRACTICES, REGULATORY DEVICES 100 3. Figures in the Soil 102 4. Health and Safety and the Politics of Safe Living 134 5. Corruption and Public Works 157 PART III. THE MODERN STATE: PROMISE AND DEFERRAL 184 6. Impossible Publics 186 7. Conclusions: Inauguration, Engineering, and the Politics of Infrastructural Form 209 Notes 228 References 238 Index 254 Sweeping in scope and conceptually ambitious, this book tells a story of infrastructure and of global flows of money, goods, and people.