6/27/2023 0 Comments Broken roads 2017“Ruins” endure little can be done with them beyond ruining them further. As a general rule, Soviet infrastructures, their unfulfilled nature notwithstanding, remain crucial throughout Russia. The “broken road” I encountered in Eastern Siberia produced the affective cycle of the construction project refusing to come into being. ![]() Brian Larkin, Alice Street, Penny Harvey, Hannah Knox, Caroline Humphrey, and many others are interested in the political entanglements, enchantments of modernity, dreams and visions enabled through grandiose and modest infrastructural projects alike. Such affect can include components of anger and annoyance, but also a sense of unity, sociality, camaraderie, and feelings of belonging to a group.Īnthropologists have long been fascinated by the affective power of infrastructures. ![]() Infrastructure acquires its affective capacity precisely because it malfunctions. Thus one “broken road” became a site around which belonging and relating unfolded. As they begin to malfunction, infrastructures not only facilitate engagement, but also produce an affect. I had the opportunity to learn this lesson in the village of Anosovo, Eastern Siberia, the main site of my fieldwork. Instead, they start to function in unexpected ways. However, even where infrastructures do not function as intended, they do not necessarily stop working altogether. Smoothly functioning infrastructures are unnoticeable they attract attention only when they break down. Her research was supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. She has written books in Russian, the latest being The Anthropology of Everydayness (Nookratia, Moscow, 2018). ![]() in Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin. Vasilina Orlova is a sociocultural anthropologist interested in the materialities of affect, Socialist visions of the future, and the contemporary manifestations and endurances of such visions. We at the Jordan Center stand with all the people of Ukraine, Russia, and the rest of the world who oppose the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
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