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- Convenors:
-
Yuan Zhang
(University of Oxford)
Mayanka Mukherji (LSE)
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- Format:
- Panel
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the intersections of built environments, mobility, and visions of the future in contexts of precarity. It examines how individuals and communities navigate material, affective, temporal, and spiritual dimensions of dwelling in spaces marked by uncertain futures.
Long Abstract:
Neoliberal policies and heightened mobility have rendered many built environments increasingly precarious. From dilapidated public housing to deteriorating infrastructure, these spaces reveal a stark contrast between aspirations of progress and lived realities of vulnerability and disrepair. This panel interrogates the complex relationships between precarious built environments, mobility, well-being, and imaginings of the future.
We aim to illuminate the ways people inhabit, challenge, and reimagine precarious futures while moving through and residing in unstable built environments. This panel invites ethnographically grounded contributions that explore how individuals and communities navigate and derive meaning from spaces affected by infrastructural decay, economic instability, political neglect, and environmental crisis.
Our focus extends to the temporal dimensions of precarious living, encompassing experiences such as impending displacement, prolonged waiting, envisioning a good life amidst uncertainty, and forging connections between present circumstances and imagined futures. By examining these diverse experiences, we seek to uncover emerging strategies and imaginaries that respond to the uneven temporalities of precarity. Potential areas of inquiry include the lived experiences of failing infrastructure, the role of religious practices in shaping future orientations, forms of temporal agency and resistance, and methodological approaches to capturing the elusive aspects of uncertain dwelling.
Through these nuanced accounts of precarious futures, we contribute to ongoing debates on space, time, mobility, and well-being in an era of instability. Ultimately, we aim to generate novel theoretical and political frameworks for addressing the uneven temporalities of precarity and envisioning alternative futures that challenge neoliberal paradigms.
Accepted papers:
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the social and political life of empty apartments in a Chinese post-industrial city near the China-Russia border, and how their making and unmaking effectuated unexpected “deaths” and “rebirths” of the city.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I take my object of inquiry as the political and social life of empty apartments in a Chinese rust-belt city named Hegang, where I conducted a 14-month ethnographic fieldwork. Originally a city situated in China’s socialist industrial heartland, Hegang started to experience drastic economic and population decline in the 1990s after China’s marketization reforms. Since 2019, however, the city started to witness an unexpected surge of migrants who started purchasing its apartments priced as cheap as 2,000 pounds, as they felt “disillusioned” about lives in China’s urban hubs, and simply hoped to adopt a life of “rest” in Hegang’s apartments.
By following the materialization of these apartments – a process that traversed global economic cycles that could be traced back to the U.S. 2008 subprime crisis – I showcase how 1) construction and destruction of housing was an instrument for the Chinese local state to negotiate its urban future in uncertain times, and 2) (the idea of) homeownership mediated personal temporal frames of precarious present and fantastical futures. I eventually probe into the question of how, in a deteriorating city, the empty apartments as signs of desperation were transformed into harbingers of hope.
Paper short abstract:
In Hungary, after the postsocialist transition, allotment gardens became a housing target destination of the financial precariat. In spite of precarious housing conditions, allotments enable affordable housing, which mitigate various social risks and empowering pepole living in housing poverty.
Paper long abstract:
Three decades after the post socialist transition, precarious housing is one of the most desperate social problems in Hungary. One of the most typical examples of the spread of precarious housing is the use of allotment gardens for permanent housing. Whereas in the socialist era, allotment gardens were the space of farming and leisure time, after the post-socialist transition they have become the homes of the financial precariat.
On the one hand, allotment gardens provide extremely precarious housing condition without basic infrastructures and amidst extreme physical exclusion. On the other hand, allotments offer affordable housing, where housing disadvantages are mitigated by self-sufficient and reciprocal practices, and dwellers can restart their housing pathways after the shock of different housing crisis. In my presentation I attempt to show this ambiguity demonstrating the perceptions and everyday practices of dwellers based on my field work conducted in a peri-urban allotment garden near Budapest. I will show to what extent do the inhabitants consider the precarious status of allotment gardens as a decline and loss of status compared to their former place of residence, and what factors are essential for them to successfully rebuild their lives in a radically different space? How do they reflect on the lack of infrastructure as a civilizational achievement and what strategies do they use to replace it? How do they reflect on the former urban dwelling and way of life they have left behind and what meanings and feelings do they associate with their new dwelling in allotment gardens?
Paper short abstract:
This paper proposes the concept of “negotiations of accountability” to explore how inhabitants of a council estate navigate ghostly futures of eviction performed by a nearby harbour redevelopment amidst arbitrariness of state action at the margins.
Paper long abstract:
A key contention among ethnographers of infrastructures is that, while often instantiating sites of reinforcement of state sovereignty, infrastructures also constitute key nodes where configurations and projects of state power can become most unstable (Larkin 2013). Drawing on ethnographic research on a harbour redevelopment near a council estate, this paper asks what configurations of the future are performed in relation to infrastructural redevelopment in Cagliari, Italy. Testing expectations about the future against tales of arbitrary forms of state power, I reflect on how the denial of accountability that characterises the state at the urban margins might take on a paradoxical character of illegibility (Das 2004), whereby the signature of the state in the spectre of eviction is read everywhere and yet cannot be tied to recognisable contexts and actions. I thus propose the concept of “negotiations of accountability” to show how illegibility prompts inhabitants to seek security from the state by searching for collective solidarities. Questioning a common distinction between resistance and subordination, I show how such quests exploit the voids left by the state's material and social infrastructures to imagine human infrastructures (Simone 2021) that foster new future possibilities of inhabiting.
Paper short abstract:
Based on long-term ethnographic research, this paper discusses the concept of the “meantime” as a temporality of precarity. The “meantime” is a common denominator for architecture initiatives that work on imagining housing alternatives in Cape Town.
Paper long abstract:
Three decades into South Africa’s new democracy, colonial and apartheid infrastructures persist, making Cape Town one of the most segregated and unequal cities in the world. The city’s majority black working class remains in a meantime limbo—suspended on obscure housing waiting lists, in precarious land and building occupations, and in flood- and fire-prone informal settlements with insecure tenure. Against this backdrop of ingrained spatial inequality and segregation, this paper introduces the concept of the “meantime” as a pervasive temporality of precarity. Drawing on long-term ethnographic and collaborative research with community architects, residential communities, housing activists, and other built environment professionals, this paper explores how these groups mobilized various participatory designs, pedagogies, and visions—such as public housing upgrades, adaptive reuse models, and incremental building typologies—to reimagine Cape Town’s most rigid housing landscape. Working and designing with and in the “meantime” was a common denominator for their design and activist initiatives. The paper discusses whether these “meantime” initiatives functioned as tactical stopgap interventions to imagine and negotiate pragmatic alternatives to South Africa’s long-failed, exclusionary public housing standards or whether they perpetuated a postcolonial political ecology that indefinitely maintains precarious housing and living conditions.
Paper short abstract:
This paper centres on the ambivalence of the ongoing eviction/resettlement of an informal settlement in central Dakar as experienced by its inhabitants. Engaging with ideas of urban ‘beauty’ and renewal, it contributes to arguments that dispossession can coexist with inclusion and redistribution.
Paper long abstract:
Taïba, a small informal settlement in central Dakar, the capital of Senegal, is undergoing an ongoing eviction/resettlement process through which its inhabitants have been promised either social housing on the outskirts of the city or financial compensation. The land was initially given to people to live on in the mid-twentieth century by an indigenous Lebu leader during early waves of urbanisation and has been inhabited ever since. Now that it has been sold to developers, people living there are experiencing a protracted period of uncertainty as the move continues to be delayed.
This paper centres on the ambivalence of the move for Taïba’s inhabitants. On the one hand, people lay claim to the place where they were born, grew up and continue to live with their families and conduct their livelihoods. At the same time, with the recent promise of social housing many are impatient to move, a sentiment accompanied by a sense that a place like Taïba no longer has its place in the heart of Dakar (xolu Dakar bi). Attending to the ambivalence of the move, this paper engages with scholarship on urban renewal that emphasises the notion of ‘beauty as control’ (Harms 2012) and, in doing do, contributes to recent research highlighting that dispossession can coexist with inclusion and redistribution (Di Nunzio 2022). Taïba was the site of my doctoral research (2017-18), and this paper draws on shorter periods of fieldwork since during which plans for the eviction have been ongoing.
Paper short abstract:
The development of Indonesia’s new capital city reveals new uncertainty to local people whose land are needed to this project by resulting “blocked future”. This leads to situation characterized by being trapped in temporality when the capacity to anticipate the future is severely limited.
Paper long abstract:
This research focuses on the development of Indonesia’s new capital city, which brings uncertainty to the people affected by the various infrastructure projects. Assemblage or networks of infrastructures, like roads, clean water pipelines, and river normalization, are still being worked on to support this new city. Like many national strategic projects, building infrastructure will result in the need for land allocation. Through the land release practice we might understand how this technical pattern interacts with socio-cultural complexity. I argue that this process brings new uncertainty to local people whose land is needed for this project, resulting in a “blocked future.” A situation that characterized by being trapped in temporality when the capacity to anticipate the future is severely limited.
At the early stage of infrastructure development, technical and bureaucratic mechanisms interact with people’s aspirations, imagination, and anticipation about the future. This situation can be seen from how vague timelines, inadequate information, and different land valuations follow the land release or acquisition process. For instance, different land valuations occur through different temporality. When villagers envision the future of how they live after receiving (or waiting for) land compensation, on the other side, the land release apparatus values land based on past and present conditions. It leads to people facing difficulties finding new land or building a house while the land price is skyrocketing. Precariousness or precarious living could be created in this process when people have limitations to anticipate the uncertain future.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the ways in which chronic congestion, deteriorating roads, and car accidents are understood by Turkish Cypriot youth. Referring to waithood and state impotence, roads become symbolic/symptomatic of the difficulties of early adulthood under entrenched non-recognition.
Paper long abstract:
Based on doctoral research, this paper looks at how Turkish Cypriot youth understand the deterioration and congestion of roads in Girne in relation to the perceived impotence of the unrecognised state and their own experiences of waithood. Girne/Kyrenia is the third largest settlement in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a contested state in the eastern Mediterranean that is subject to non-recognition and international embargoes. Over the last twenty years, the city of Girne has seen a rapid increase in population and buildings, but the infrastructure has not kept up. For Turkish Cypriots in their twenties, Girne's roads have seemed to be decaying for their entire memories, with the roads increasingly unable to cope with the booming population. This paper considers Turkish Cypriot youth's thoughts on poor road quality, lack of public transport, and increasingly frequent car accidents, in the context of their broader views on the viability of their futures within the contested state. Drawing on ethnographic interviews, this paper ties the condition of Girne's roads to young Turkish Cypriots perceptions of their state's (in)ability to provide for its citizens and thus fulfil the functions of a 'real state’. As they navigate their early adulthood, Turkish Cypriot youth thus factor the chronic decline of Girne’s roads into the decision of whether or not they are willing to entrust their futures to a state that many view as incapable of protecting them from fatal car crashes or filling potholes.
Paper short abstract:
This presentation explores how religious buildings and symbols in precarious urban settlements shape people’s imaginations and aspirations for the future. These aspirations include visions on what constitutes a good life and a good community in the face of (perceived) moral degradation and violence.
Paper long abstract:
In Jakarta and Rio de Janeiro, residents of informal and precarious settlements organize themselves through a variety of social and spiritual networks. These networks materialize in the urban environment through buildings, objects, and images that serve as important reference points not only for dealing with pervasive precarity and uncertainty but also for enacting moral aspirations about a good life and a good community. For instance, in Jakarta's kampungs, enclosed settlements spread across the city, buildings such as the mosque and the watchhouse (gardu) play a pivotal role in enabling residents to navigate the fragmented and pluralized urban landscape. Moreover, these buildings form a critical part of the urban religious infrastructure, which shapes the ways in which future moral aspirations are materialized and political subjectivities are remade. In Rio de Janeiro, informal settlements known as favelas form part of an urban environment characterized by uncertainty and unpredictability due to territorial disputes and police violence. Mural paintings of Christian-Jewish symbols, commissioned by a local drug trafficking gang, draw on these popular imaginations of the city as a site of struggle and suffering. At the same time, the murals also offer an alternative vision of the future of the favela as a space of divine exception and promise. Our findings are the result of one year ethnographic fieldwork in Jakarta and Rio de Janeiro and form part of a broader project that examines the role of religion in urban governance configurations in megacities of the Global South.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines life in Gyumri, Armenia, shaped by the 1988 earthquake and ongoing political and economic crises. Through an affective lens on renovation and construction practices, it explores how residents navigate precarity and envision the future within a landscape of decay and uncertainty.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines life in a state of ruin and decay in the cityscape of Gyumri, an Armenian city located on the border with Turkey. The city's dilapidated condition is largely the result of the devastating earthquake of 1988. The debris from this environmental catastrophe, coupled with the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, decades of war, energy crisis, and corruption, have led many residents to perceive their city as a "sad place" to this day. Armenia's unresolved conflicts with Turkey and Azerbaijan, alongside its complex relationship with Russia, further contribute to a pervasive sense of uncertainty in everyday life.
Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, I explore renovation and construction practices as forms of dwelling in both ruin and uncertainty. These practices are enduring features of daily life in Gyumri. Using a relational affective approach, I investigate the embodied experiences and future-oriented practices that emerge in an environment marked by destruction, instability, and precarity. How do the residents of Gyumri navigate this precarity? What futures are imagined and constructed through renovation and construction practices?
Drawing on feminist affect theory, the anthropology of time, and precarity, I explore the affective dimensions of Gyumri’s ruination. My research illuminates the interplay between war, environmental disaster, imperialism, and political failure in shaping the everyday life and urban fabric of the city. Through an affective lens, I challenge conventional understandings of life in a precarious present by highlighting the coexistence of decay and stability as parallel pasts, presents, and futures within the same embodied experiences.
Paper short abstract:
This paper studies the emergence and evolution of informal economic practices in Poti, Georgia. Through the lens of precarious labour, ruderal ecologies, and the reclamation of maritime rights, the study explores how people forge connections between present uncertainties and future possibilities.
Paper long abstract:
This paper investigates the emergence and evolution of informal economic practices in response to the collapse of Soviet infrastructure in the port town of Poti, Georgia. Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the dismantling of established infrastructures gave rise to a ruderal environment where the remnants of the Soviet era intersect with new forms of economic adaptation. In this context, scrap metal collection and fish smoking became prominent survival strategies, transforming the "remnants of the Empire" into capitalist commodities and forging new economic relationships. As Georgia experienced political instability, economic collapse, and social upheaval, individuals adapted by engaging in self-reliant labour practices amidst widespread infrastructural decay. This paper traces how these practices emerged in the 1990s and have persisted, becoming integral to local livelihoods despite state-led marketization efforts following the “Rose Revolution” of 2003. The analysis highlights the resilience and ingenuity of those marginalized by neoliberal reforms, revealing how communities navigate precarious futures shaped by economic instability and environmental decline. By focusing on how local communities contest state-driven reforms aimed at privatising and regulating access to maritime resources, the study shows how these practices serve as economic lifelines and act as resistance against the capitalist restructuring of local economies. Through the lens of precarious labour, ruderal ecologies, and the reclamation of maritime rights, the paper explores how people forge connections between present uncertainties and future possibilities. It offers a nuanced understanding of how individuals negotiate precarity, reconfigure their built environments, and cultivate economic resilience amidst instability.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on my training as social anthropologist and architectural engineer, using drawing as methodology, I delve into the infrastructure of, on the surface, two very different hospitals; Yangon General Hospital and Darlington Memorial Hospital.
Paper long abstract:
Through two hospital campuses, one in Myanmar and one in the UK, this paper traces the social and political change in Yangon and within the NHS (and the relationship between the two) with a particular lens on energy and energy practices in a heating world. What will emerge is the hospital on the move; a building typology whose only constant is that it is in constant motion.
The paper will draw on archival material alongside the author’s three years as an architectural engineer at YGH, ethnographic fieldwork with pens and sketchbooks in 2019/20, and recent fieldwork in the northeast of the UK.
The backdrop are contemporary discussions in anthropology on the state of our world, how to continue living in our ruins, recent questions on the ethics of planning and infrastructure development, its implementation or non-implementation, alongside its implications for climate change. Considering this, the paper reaches into YGH’s and DMH’s pasts to explore issues around healthcare infrastructures in both Myanmar and the UK.
In this, I argue for a practice-based understanding of hospitals (and institutional infrastructures) beyond discourses of ”lack” and “failure”. Here, the ethnography animates past and present entanglements of buildings and patient bodies, staff, attendants and visitors, all striving for life on the hospitals' campuses.