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- Convenors:
-
Jonathan Alderman
(University of St Andrews)
Marlit Rosolowsky (University of St Andrews)
Lisa Grund (Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- SO-D307
- Sessions:
- Thursday 16 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Stockholm
Short Abstract:
The construction of roads transforms movement, social relations and residency. This panel examines ethnographically and theoretically how socio-economic relationships facilitated by footpaths can be reconfigured by highways, and how relationships on the move are experienced differently.
Long Abstract:
This panel considers the transformative effects of roads through the different movement they facilitate. While roads can be built with multiple intentions stimulated by various imaginaries, ultimately, they also have the capacity to re-shape the movement of people, allowing them to travel further and faster. The ease of movement facilitated by roads allows for social relationships to be experienced differently. Migration is facilitated, but so is dual residence, because of the convenience of travelling between locations that roads create. The construction of roads can also drastically impact on economic relationships. Where journeys on foot to trade between neighbouring communities or ones further afield may have been commonplace, when a road is constructed, these relationships are often tested because of the ability of people to by-pass their neighbours in taking their goods directly to market.
Thus, this panel also intends to explore what kind of ethnographic and theoretical insights can be gained when bringing perspectives on highways and local footpaths together. While highways may elicit novel and interesting relations, social configurations, and patterns of movement, footpaths might be constituted of other networks of relationships and patterns of movement. In this light, the panel invites papers to explore the following questions: How do new roads create different patterns of movement and relationships? How do people perceive and experience the intersecting spatio-temporal networks constituted of highways and footpaths? How does a new highway transform people's ideas of 'place'?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 16 August, 2018, -Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses the role of roads in changing people's relations with place and focuses on the case study of Okinskii district in Buryatia. It examines the intertwined changes which Orlik-Mondy road brought to Okinskii district and their influence on the articulations of local identity.
Paper long abstract:
This paper discusses the role of roads in changing people's relations with place and focuses on the case study of Okinskii district in Buryatia, South-Central Siberia. This is one of the remote areas of the region (approximately 700 kilometers from Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Republic), and it is scarcely populated. Out of 5,400 people residing in the district, around 3,000 - Soiots - have the status of an indigenous minority of the Russian Federation. Until 1993, Okinskii district could only be accessed by plane. The construction of the Orlik - Mondy road which connected the district with the rest of Buryatia was finished in 1993. The road was a long-awaited project and was even called "The Road of Life" in local media. The Orlik-Mondy road brought significant changes in its residents' life and changed their perceptions of time and place. As a number of interviews reflect, the local temporal references are often expressed through "before the road" or "after the road" concepts. The construction of the road offered opportunities for the development of extractive businesses and tourism in the region, and it also impacted the movement patterns of local residents. At the same time, for a number of residents the larger accessibility of their region means a threat to local traditions and beliefs. The paper examines the interconnectedness of economic, social and cultural changes which Orlik-Mondy road brought to Okinskii district and discusses how these changes influenced the articulations of local identity.
Paper short abstract:
My paper explores the tensions and difficulties of movement that farmers in Nădlac, West Romania, faced once a new highway cut across their lands and severed access to large swaths of their arable land as well as their mobilization to preserve their specific forms of travel along farm tracks.
Paper long abstract:
Over the last decade, the small town of Nădlac on Romania's border with Hungary, turned into a place of contention between local farmers and state agents, regarding the construction of the highway connecting Romania with Hungary. Life in Nădlac, the largest road border crossing between the two countries and a historical farming community with highly fertile lands, was dominated by the claims of the farmers seeking to preserve their farm tracks, and continuous access to around 60% of their land, and state agents and developers pushing forward to complete a new highway as fast and cheap as possible. Based on my recurrent fieldwork there since 2014, I explore the economic and social transformations brought about by the highway project, the emergence of a partly successful local mobilization and the clash between local/agricultural and commercial/regional forms of mobility. For the latter, I show that preserving and using farm roads is at once, an economic imperative, a form of mastering local geography and a continuous source of pride and belonging. From a local standpoint, the modern highway all but negates these possibilities. This is immediately visible in the way the farmers used the intimate knowledge of the terrain to lobby for the construction of two underpasses, that safeguarded their access to land, while radically altering the perception of their environment and their patterns of using roads.
Paper short abstract:
Taking a dirt-road renovation in Daghestan (North Caucasus) as an example I will show how new social collectivities emerge from humans' (dis)entanglements with checkpoint and dirt-road infrastructures.
Paper long abstract:
The Republic of Daghestan, situated in the Russia's South experienced political and religious turmoil in the recent years. As a result, many people clang to their communities and tried to stay "beyond" the state. They introduced their own laws and renovated their own roads.
In my paper I take a closer look at "checkpoint infrastructure" (highways that connect checkpoints, and other strategic objects) and "dirt-road infrastructure" (unsustained roads beyond checkpoint infrastructure).
Taking a dirt-road renovation in Shiri village as an example I will show how new social collectivities emerge from humans' (dis)entanglements with checkpoint infrastructure and dirt-road infrastructure. I argue that in places permeated by state violence dirt-roads and checkpoint infrastructures are good to think with because we can learn more about state's presence (absence) in a given setting as well as unravel the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion through infrastructure. In a longer run, we can also observe social changes in the North Caucasus and learn more about affective resonances of state power in the Russia's peripheries.
The paper is based on my ethnographic fieldwork between 2007 and 2017 in Daghestan.
Paper short abstract:
Michel de Certeau had introduced the conceptional figure of the trickster, facilitating infrastructure built by powerful players for his own needs. For him roads - and unexpectedly even modern highway corridors - offer opportunities for a smaller scale roadside economy covering many shades of grey.
Paper long abstract:
I propose to expand the dichotomy of paths and roads to modern highway corridors, where intersections are rare and service station limited. While roads still offer opportunities for a smaller scale roadside economy covering many shades of grey, at modern highway corridors there seem to be no chance at all.
Following Michel de Certeau's distinction between 'strategies' (of those in power) and 'tactics' (of tricksters) I propose to introduce the notions of 'nodes' and 'knots' alongside roads, where nodes are constituted by strategies of powerful institutions within logistic networks and the network of road corridors, whereas knots are established by the tactics of individuals to fulfil their everyday needs in transit. Nodes and knots can be independent to each other, but they are not always distinct, they often overlap, when existing nodes are used for the individuals' practice of 'knotting'. Here trade might happen, rituals and routines developed, contacts initiated with regions of origin or target. It is also where those who were mobile before engage in cultivating and maintaining the on-the-spot, fragmented communities.
Although highway service stations are officially closed off to pedestrians, unobtrusive gates offer access to/from the hinterland, for supply, staff and fire-police access only. They can be facilitated by neighbours to walk to a highway station to offer services, purchase goods at the integrated shop or spend part of their leisure time at the gas station café participating at and enjoying the atmosphere of a modern life in transit.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores interrelationships between roads, tourism and the notion of heritage in the case of the 'Lycian Way' in south Turkey. It attempts to show that the notion of heritage plays an important role in the reconfiguration of the obsoleted roads and footpaths, to trekkers' destination.
Paper long abstract:
As transport infrastructure, roads play an important role in facilitating the mobility of tourists. At the same time, roads themselves are often seen as an attraction for tourists like the Santiago De Compostela Pilgrim Routes. Such an interrelationship between roads and tourism impacts on the socio-economic relations of local communities. This paper explores how development of the road network facilitates tourism and transform economic relations of local communities, focusing on the development of a trekking route called 'Lycian Way,' a 540 km footpath along the western Mediterranean coast of Turkey. The 'Lycian Way,' which was waymarked by a British woman from the late 1990s, consists mainly of ancient Roman roads and local footpaths used by goat shepherds, connecting various ancient ruins in the region, some of which are already tourist destinations (such as Xanthos, Myra and Olympos) while others are unexcavated temples and early Christian churches and monasteries. The route gradually became popular imbuing these ancient city remains, both well-known and unknown, with new meanings as trekkers' destinations. As the number of the tourists walking on the Lycian Way grew in the 2000s, the locals started seeing the trail as a resource for tourism development. Examining the development of the Lycian Way trekking tourism, this paper attempts to show that, in this particular case, the notion of heritage plays an important role in the reconfiguration of the old roads and footpaths, which became obsoleted through the development of modern road network, to trekkers' destination.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the perceptions and the everyday practicalities of journeys along roads and paths by the Makushi people, a Carib-speaking Pemon group of Southern Guyana. Through the lens of mobility, the production of knowledge, as well as notions of self and other are unfolded.
Paper long abstract:
Movement is central to Makushi sociality, from daily life to cosmogonies. Every day, when going to the forest, neighbouring villages and cities, people use paths and roads which each require different kinds of technologies, knowledge and ways of orientation.
In comparison to the many ephemeral paths, spreading through the savannah and forest islands, "permanent" roads for the Makushi are symbols of external influence, becoming temporal and spatial markers. Paths are made by walking and they meander according to social and narrative cartographies, respecting mythscapes and changing seasons.
Like places, paths and roads gather stories, experiences, adventures, where journeys can turn into lengthy odysseys. Being shared not only by those who happen to live beside them but also by those that just pass through, roads are spaces of encounters that reveal the Amerindian/interior relationship to the nation/coast and to the other side of the border. Knowing how to use genealogical connections and extending the circle of familiarity to strangers, who might be helpful on the way, is an essential part of the practical aspects of being on the move.
This paper will focus on two examples of journeys, one along roads by vehicle, another along paths by walking. The first example, the main dirt road, which cuts through the entire country, connecting the capital of Guyana with Brazil, and the second, the paths leading through Pakaraima mountain communities, will bring to the fore Makushi perceptions and creative processes of world-making connected to these routes.
Paper short abstract:
The paper seeks to draw a comparison between a coral surfaced road and local garden footpaths in Buka Island (Papua New Guinea) by exploring the different networks, relationships and practices that keep them open for the movement and transport of persons and things.
Paper long abstract:
In Buka Island, the Buka Ring Road (John Teosin Highway) that connects the villages along the east coast with the commercial and administrative center of the Autonomous Region in Bougainville, Buka Town, plays a vital role in people's lives and their daily movement. Similarly, from a perspective on movement, the footpaths connecting people to their gardens play a crucial role in their daily and even ritual life. This paper thus seeks to compare how the highway as well as these footpaths are built and maintained, especially in an environment in which their condition is constantly changing and deteriorating due to heavy rainfall and fast-growing vegetation. Moreover, while footpaths are mainly kept open through the constant movement along them, the coral road requires other maintenance interventions. In this respect, this paper therefore intends to examine the networks, relationships and practices that enable the building and the maintenance of the highway and the garden paths. Overall, this paper also seeks to explore the possible ethnographic and theoretical contributions of such a comparison by addressing the following questions: What and who facilitates the building and maintenance of footpaths and roads? What are the relationships sustaining them and what kind of relationships do roads and footpaths elicit?
Paper short abstract:
Road construction can reshape rural communities and social relationships. The paper will discuss how a road, through facilitating movement faster and further, has enabled migration and new kinds of economic exchanges, reconfiguring social relationships within rural communities in the Bolivian Andes.
Paper long abstract:
The traditional rural Andean socio-territorial unit, the ayllu, is defined for its members by complementarity through and inter- and intra- community exchange of products between different ecological levels. Exchange occurs both between human members of ayllus and between living humans and their ancestral landscape deities. Drawing on fieldwork with the Kallawayas, an indigenous Bolivian nation, this paper will examine how the relationships and residence of the ayllu are transformed by the building of a road facilitating movement further and faster. Until 1983, Kallawaya region was relatively isolated. Relationships and dietary variety were maintained through bartering of products within communities of ayllus, situated at different levels of altitude. These journeys would be made on foot with a mule. However, the construction of a tarmacked road, from Bolivia's capital city, La Paz, to the Amazon basin, passing through the Kallawaya region, has had two effects: the road has altered economic relations and residency patterns, extending the ayllu, while fragmenting it. The road has made it easier for communities to be sold directly at market in La Paz and markets on the border with Peru; it has also facilitated migration from rural to urban areas and from Andean to tropical areas, leading to dual residency. This paper will examine how migration and the mixing of barter with monetary relations has affected social relations within the ayllu, transforming the ayllu spatially.