Paper short abstract:

In the absence of formal traffic signals, motorbike drivers in Mandalay, Myanmar, employ a wide range of communicative acts to keep the city moving and avoid catastrophe. This paper is a reflection on the interpersonal and affective infrastructure formed by these acts.

Paper long abstract:

Mandalay, the final capital of precolonial Myanmar, is the centre of Myanmar’s rich motorbike culture. The city centre is formed by a square grid, mostly without traffic signals of any kind: to navigate Mandalay, one must employ a range of communicative strategies that cannot be formally taught but need to be learned through experience. During fieldwork conducted in 2019 and 2020, I observed how motorbike drivers use horns, head signals, eye contact, and subtle speed changes to avoid collisions and keep traffic moving, particularly in Mandalay’s colonial-period central grid; during interviews and “go-alongs” (Kusenbach 2003) with Mandalay residents, I learned to see (and, importantly, to feel) the city. In Star’s (1999, p. 382) now-classic formulation, infrastructure ought to be apparently seamless, and only become “visible on breakdown.” By contrast, Mandalay’s road system gives rise to a kind of interpersonal infrastructure (cf. Simone 2004) that is constantly visible, never seamless, and forces the active enrolment of drivers and pedestrians into communicative acts. Taking Mandalay’s motorbike culture as my starting point, I attempt to outline an anthropology that looks up from the “rubble” and “future ruins” (Gupta 2018) of infrastructure-in-progress towards the affective states and cultural patterns that emerge from that very rubble.