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P36


Amidst weathering forces: Climate change and the political ecology of infrastructures 
Convenors:
Andrea Enrico Pia (London School of Economics)
Kathrine Ann Cagat (University of Utah Asia Campus)
Formats:
Panels
Location:
British Museum - Sackler A
Start time:
29 May, 2016 at
Time zone: Europe/London
Session slots:
1

Short Abstract:

By focusing on various actors' engagement with dynamic weather forces and infrastructures, this panel considers the political ecology of infrastructures as constituted in issues regarding climate change.

Long Abstract:

Human relations to the environment are increasingly being mediated by infrastructures, which is intensified amidst erratic weather conditions. Infrastructures provide essential services that foster and maintain well-being. However, infrastructures are likewise implicated in systematic environmental transformations, particularly in regards to climate change, which result in inequities, tensions and uncertainties. Dynamic weather forces may also exasperate the challenges infrastructural projects present in relation to the management of resources that affect communities' adaptive capacities. Focusing on the entanglement between weather forces and infrastructure underscores how climatic changes impact people's everyday life, and is not simply related to cataclysmic events. This panel considers how various actors engage with social and environmental transformations and considers the role of weather and infrastructures in such processes and relations. We examine the role that infrastructures and weather play in discourses and practices that grapple with climate change. Specifically, it considers processes of categorisation, measurement, regulation and contestation of politically sanctioned relations with the changing climate and environment.

Papers in this panel will contribute to furthering an anthropological understanding of the human connection to a changing climate and environment. We especially consider the temporal aspect of these connections in how infrastructural projects are implicated in the immediate and long-term management of resources and in the production of contextual vulnerability to climate change. The articles included in this panel will present diverse and conflicting articulations and embodiments of aspirations, anxieties and expectations regarding the entanglement of weather forces and infrastructural projects as constituted in climate change issues.

Accepted papers:

Session 1