Anthropology of Infrastructure in Brazil: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Emerging Contexts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51359/2525-5223.2020.249899Keywords:
infrastructure, anthropology, cosmopolitics, colonialism, BrazilAbstract
This article discusses infrastructure as an emerging topic in Brazilian anthropology. While prominent in public and media spaces, the category has been largely absent from national anthropology until recently. Initially sidelined as static and socially uninteresting composites, the notion of infrastructure has been rediscovered in relation to dynamic symbolic-material formations entwined with various flows and epistemic networks at local and translocal levels. This article therefore introduces a number of original ethnographic studies authored by researchers in Brazil, including studies on industrial, residential, social, digital, surveillance, and counter-hegemonic infrastructures. Moreover, this dossier includes translations of two classic texts in the international anthropology of infrastructure. Within broader interdisciplinary contexts, this article suggests that infrastructures can be examined across the productive tension between postcolonial legacies and cosmopolitical possibilities, and, more specifically, considers that topical theorizations should inform local ethnographic research which, in turn, can generate new knowledge that is nationally and intellectually relevant.
References
AMIR, S. 2012. The Technological State in Indonesia: The Co-constitution of High Technology and Authoritarian Politics. London: Routledge
ANAND, N. 2017. Hydraulic city: water and the infrastructures of citizenship in Mumbai. Durham: Duke University Press.
ANAND, N., GUPTA, A., & APPEL, H. (eds.). 2018. The promise of infrastructure. Durham: Duke University Press.
ANDERSON, W. 2009. “From subjugated knowledge to conjugated subjects: science and globalisation, or postcolonial studies of science?”. Postcolonial Studies, 124:389-400.
APPADURAI, A. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
ARBIX, G. 2010. “Innovation and the Development Agenda”. Economic Sociology, 112:16-23.
ARENDT, H. 1998. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
BAIARDI, A., & RIBEIRO, M. C. 2011. “A cooperação internacional norte-sul na ciência e tecnologia: gênese e evolução”. Caderno CRCH, 24(63):593-608.
BALBACHEVSKY, E., & BOTELHO, A. 2011. Science and Innovation policies in Brazil: a framework for the analysis of change and continuity. Trabalho apresentado no “IPSA-ECPR: Whatever Happened to North-South?”, USP, Sâo Paulo-SP.
BAUMAN, Z. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press.
BIAO, X. 2006. Global ‘Body Shopping’: An Indian Labor System in the Information Technology Industry. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
BISPO DOS SANTOS, A. 2015. Colonização, Quilombos modos e significados. Brasília: Universidade de Brasília.
CALLON, M. 1980. “Struggles and Negotiations to Define What is Problematic and What is Not: The Socio-logic of Translation”. In KNORR-CETINA, K. (ed.): The Social Process of Scientific Investigation, pp. 197-221. Dordrecht/Boston: Reidel.
CENTRO DE APOIO AO DESENVOLVIMENTO TECNOLÓGICO - MCTI. 2013. Estudos de Projeto de Alta Complexidade: indicadores de parques tecnológicos.
CLASTRES, P. 2017. A sociedade contra o estado. São Paulo: Editora Ubu.
COSTA Jr, L. C. 2005. Reflexividade e Aceleração: Estratégias Racionais de Sobrevivência - o caso dos profissionais do pólo de informática do Recife. Dissertação de Mestrado. Recife: Universidade Federal de Pernambuco.
CRUZ, R. 2004. O Que as Empresas Podem Fazer pela Inclusão Digital. São Paulo: Instituto Ethos de Empresas e Responsabilidade Social.
D’ANDREA, A. 2010. ‘You Shouldn’t Take the BlackBerry to your Bedroom’: Mobility and Flexibility among High-Tech Workers of the National Technology Park Ireland. Field Report: University of Limerick.
D’ANDREA, A., GRAY, B., & CIOLFI, L. (eds.). 2011. “Methodological Challenges and Innovations for Mobilities Research”. Mobilities Journal, 6(2): 149-160 .
DE BOECK, F., & BALOJI, S. 2016. Suturing the city: living together in Congo’s urban worlds. London: Autograph ABP.
DE LAET, M., & Mol, A. 2000. “The Zimbabwe Bush Pump: Mechanics of a Fluid Technology”. Social Studies of Science, 30(2):225-263.
DI NUNZIO, Marco 2018. ‘Anthropology of Infrastructure’. Governing Infrastructures Interfaces - Research Note. London: London School of Economics and Political Science.
FARIAS JR, I. et al. 2008. “Porto Digital: Um Exemplo de Responsabilidade Social”. Novas Tecnologias na Educação, 6(2):1-10.
FELIZARDO, R. 2013. Em Busca de Novos Padrões de Desenvolvimento: Os Parques Tecnológicos no Brasil. Dissertação de Mestrado. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo.
FERGUSON, J. 1994. The Anti-Politics Machine: ‘Development’, Depoliticization, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
FERREIRA, L. 2008. Estudo Comparativo de Arranjos e Sistemas Produtivos Locais de Software no Nordeste do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
FIGLIOLI, A. 2013. Em Busca da Sustentabilidade Econômico-Financeira de Organizações Gestoras de Parques Tecnológicos: Proposta de Modelo de Negócio no Contexto Brasileiro. Tese de Doutorado, São Paulo: USP.
FISCHER, M. 2007. “Four Genealogies for a Recombinant Anthropology of Science and Technology”. Cultural Anthropology, 224(*):539-615.
FISCHER, M. 2013. “Biopolis: Asian Science in the Global Circuitry”. Science Technology & Society, 18(3):379-404.FONTE, C., PORTELA, L. & JESUS, M. 2020. Território Suape. Vídeo Documentário.
FRIEDMAN, T. 2007. The World is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Picador.GIDDENS, Anthony 1989. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
GIELFI, G., & PEREIRA, N. 2011. “A Unicamp e a indústria de petróleo: uma análise da produção científica do Centro de Estudos do Petróleo”. In MONTEIRO, M., CAMPOS, C. & DIAS, R. (eds.): Novos Horizontes em Politica Cientifica e Tecnológica, pp. 15-36. Santo André: UFABC.
GODELIER, M. et al. 1978. “Infrastructures, Societies, and History”. Current Anthropology, 19(4):763-771.
GODELIER, M. 1994. “Deconstruct to Reconstruct: An Interview with Maurice Godelier, by Paul Eiss and Thomas Wolfe”. The Journal of the International Institute. (https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jii/4750978.0001.207/--deconstruct-to-reconstruct-an-interview-with-maurice?rgn=main;view=fulltext; acesso em 30/11/2020).
GOUVEIA, C. 2013. Porto Leve – A Mobility and Safety Intelligent Infrastructure Urban Solution for Porto Digital. Trabalho apresentado no “30th IASP World Conference on Science and Technology”. Recife-PE.
GOUVEIA, C., TARGINO, P., & SABOYA, F. 2012. Porto Digital’s Support System for Economic Development and Innovation Promotion. Trabalho apresentado no “29th IASP World Conference”. Tallin, Estonia.
GRAHAM, S., & MCFARLANE, C. Eds.. 2015. Infrastructural lives: urban infrastructure in context. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.
GRAEBER, D. 2004. Fragments of an anarchist anthropology. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press.
GUIMARÃES, S. 2011. “Produção do Conhecimento Científico e Inovação: desafios do novo padrão de desenvolvimento”. Caderno CRCH, 24(63):461-466.
GUIMARÃES, S., & AZAMBUJA, L. 2009. “Empreendedorismo high-tech no Brasil: Condicionantes econômicos, políticos e culturais”. Revista Sociedade e Estado, 25(1):93-121.
GUNEL, G. 2011. “Spaceship in the Desert: Conceptions of Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City”. Anthropology News, Out.:3-4.
GUSTERSON, H. 1998. Nuclear Rites: a Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War. Berkeley: University of California Press.
HESS, D. J. 2007. “Crosscurrents: Social Movements and the Anthropology of Science and Technology”. American Anthropologist, 109(3):463-472.
HETHERINGTON, K. (ed.). 2019. Infrastructure, environment, and life in the Anthropocene. Durham: Duke University Press.
JASANOFF, S. 2005. Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton: Princeton University.
KNORR-CETINA, K. 1999. Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge. Cambridge: H. U. Press.
KNORR-CETINA, K. 2009. “The Synthetic Situation: Interactionism for a Global World”. Symbolic Interactionism, 32(1):61-87.
KNORR-CETINA, K., KROHN, R. & WHITLEY, R. (eds.). 1980. The Social Process of Scientific Investigation. Dordrecht/Boston: Reidel.
KOPENAWA, D. & ALBERT. B. 2015. Queda Do Céu: Palavras de Um XamãYanomami. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
KRENAK, Ailton. 2019. Ideias Para Adiar o Fim Do Mundo. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.
LAHSEN, M. 2004. “Transnational Locals: Brazilian Experiences of the Climate Regime”. In JASANOFF, S. & MARTELLO, M. (eds.): Earthly Politics: Local and Global in Environmental Governance, pp. 151-172. Boston: MIT.
LARKIN, B. 2004. “Degraded Images, Distorted Sounds: Nigerian Video and the Infrastructure of Piracy”. Public Culture, 16(2):289-314.
LARKIN, B. 2013. “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure”. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42:327-343.
LARKIN, B. 2018. “Promising Forms: The Political Aesthetics of Infrastructure”. In ANAND, N., GUPTA, A., & APPEL, H. (eds.): The promise of infrastructure, pp.175-202 Durham: Duke University Press.
LATOUR, B. 1987. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
LATOUR, B. 1996. “The Trouble with Actor Network Theory”. Soziale Welt, 47:369-381.
LATOUR, B. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
LOOMBA, A., KAUL, S., & BUNZL, M. 2005. Postcolonial Studies and Beyond. Durham: Duke University Press.
MASCO, J. 2006. The Nuclear Borderlands: The Manhattan Project in Post-Cold War New Mexico. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
MATHEWS, A. S. 2008. “State Making, Knowledge, and Ignorance: Translation and Concealment in Mexican Forestry Institutions”. American Anthropologist, 110(4):484-494.
MITCHELL, S. T. 2013. “Space, Sovereignty, Inequality: Interpreting the Explosion of Brazil’s VLS Rocket”. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 18(3):395-412.
MONTEIRO, M. 2012a. “Imagens de Satélite como Sítio Etnográfico? Interpretando práticas de sensoriamento remoto no Brasil”. In KERBAUY, T., ANDRADE, T. & HAYASHI, C. (eds.): Ciência, Tecnologia e Sociedade no Brasil, pp. 251-278. Campinas: Alinea.
MONTEIRO, M. 2012b. Os Dilemas do Humano: reinventando o corpo numa era biotecnológica. São Paulo: Annablume.
MONTEIRO, M. 2012c. “Reconsiderando a Etnografia da Ciência e da Tecnologia: Tecnociência na prática”. Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais, 277(9):139-232.
MONTEIRO, M., CAMPOS, C., & DIAS, R. (eds.) 2014. Novos Horizontes em Política Cientifica e Tecnológica. Santo Andre: Universidade Federal do ABC.
OLIVIER DE SARDAN, Jean-Pierre. 2005 Anthropology and Development: Understanding Contemporary Social Change. London: Zed Books.
PEREIRA, L., & PLONSKI, G. 2009. “Shedding light on technological development in Brazil”. Technovation, 29:451-464.
PERON, A. 2011. A factibilidade da transferência de tecnologia e o spinoff no Programa FX-2 da FAB 59. In MONTEIRO, M., CAMPOS, C., & DIAS, R. (eds.): Novos Horizontes em Política Cientifica e Tecnológica, pp. 59-74. Santo André: UFABC.
PLONSKI, G. 2005. “Bases para um Movimento pela Inovação Tecnológica no Brasil”. São Paulo em Perspectiva, 19(1):25-33.
PRIBILSKY, J. 2013. “Technoscience in Las Américas: STS Engagements in Latin American Anthropology”. The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 18(3):371-375.
QUERETTE, E., SABOYA, F., & MOLINA, A. 2010. Porto Digital: a model of implementing a Technology Park as a driver for economic development. Trabalho apresentado no “XXVII IASP World Conference on Science and Technology”. Daejeon, Coreia do Sul.
RAJAN, K. 2006. Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life. Durham: Duke University Press.
REGO, I. M. 2006. “A Cidade Virtual: O Porto Digital como representação do Recife”. Iniciacom, 1(1):1-10.
RODGERS, D. & O’NEILL, B. 2012. “Infrastrutural violence: Introduction to the special issue”. Ethnography, 13(4):401-412
ROSZAK, T. 1995. The Making of a Counterculture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and its Youthful Opposition. Berkeley: Univ. of California.
SAHLINS, M. 2010. “Infrastructuralism”. Critical Inquiry, 363(*):371-385.
SASSEN, S. 2006. Cities in a World Economy. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge.
SASSEN, S. (ed.). 2007. Deciphering the Global: Its Scales, Spaces and Subjects. New York: Routledge.
SAUTCHUK, C. 2007. “A medida da gordura: o interno e o íntimo na academia de ginástica”. Mana, 13(1):153-179.
SCHMITT, C. 2007 [1926]. “The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations”. In SCHMITT, C. et al. (eds.): The Concept of the Political, Expanded Edition, pp. 80-96. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
SCHWARTZMAN, S. (ed.) 2008. Universidad y Desarrollo en Latinoamérica: experiencias exitosas de centros de investigación. Bogotá: UNESCO-IESALC.
SCOTT, J. C. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press.
SILVA, F. Q. B. 2008. A City and its Science Park: building a local innovation system for urban and economic development. Trabalho apresentado no “XXV IASP World Conference on Science and Technology”. Johannesburg, Africa do Sul.
STAR, S. L. 1999a. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure”. American Behavioral Scientist, 43(3):377-391.
STEWART, K. 2007. Ordinary Affects. Durham: Duke University Press.
STRATHERN, M. 2014. O Efeito Etnográfico e Outros Ensaios. São Paulo: Cosac & Naify.
TADDEI, R. 2013. “Anthropologies of the Future: On the Social Performativity of Climate Forecasts”. In KOPNINA, H. & SHOREMAN-OUIMET, E. (eds.): Environmental Anthropology: Future Directions, pp.244-263. London: Routledge.
TAKHTEYEV, Y. 2012. Coding Places: Software Practice in a South American City. Massachusetts: MIT Press.URRY, J. 2007. Mobilities. Cambridge: Polity Press.
VAILATI, A. & ZAMORANO, G. (eds.). (no prelo). Ethnographies of ‘On Demand’ Films: Anthropological Explorations of Commissioned Audiovisual Productions. New York: Palgrave.
VON SCHNITZLER, A. 2013. “Traveling Technologies: Infrastructure, Ethical Regimes, and the Materiality of Politics in South Africa”. Cultural Anthropology, 28(4):670-693.
XIANG, B., & LINDQUIST, J. 2014. “Migration Infrastructure”. International Migration Review, 48(1):122-148.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Direitos Autorais para textos publicados na Revista ANTHROPOLÓGICAS são do autor, com direitos de primeira publicação para a revista.
Authors retain the copyright and full publishing rights without restrictions.
