K Hetherington
Biographic Data
| ID | 7133 |
|---|---|
| NAME | K Hetherington |
| GIVEN NAMES | K |
| FAMILY NAME | Hetherington |
| SIGNATURE | HETHERINGTON K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Concordia University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8464-1088 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 329 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
Composite ethnography: Collective encounters with emergent objects in the anthropocene
This paper introduces a methodological approach we call “composite ethnography,” a practice of lab-based qualitative research that focuses on collaboration, materiality and multiplicity. Drawing on a series of experiments running a collaborative project on urban waterways with graduate students, we argue that composite ethnography offers a way to think about the emergent research objects associated with what is increasingly referred to as the “An…
Participatory drainage: Infrastructural citizenship in Montreal’s back alleys
This article examines citizen participation in green infrastructure initiatives in two distinct back-alley drainage projects in Montreal. It studies how planners and city officials attempt to foster “citizen participation” in climate change adaptation, but often inadvertently stifle it through bureaucratic processes and narrow definitions of participation. Drawing on the concept of infrastructural citizenship, the study reveals a disconnect betwe…
The Time of Ghost Rivers
This article begins with a funeral, a memorial for a small urban river buried by the city of Montreal. Conversations about the memorial turned on the question of what it meant for a river to be dead, or how we might think of it persisting in some form: a ghost that demands active memory. Using this story as a starting point, the article explores the ghost river, its various revivals in the present, and the halting attempts by urban actors to form…
Los hechos nunca andan solos: The future of facts in Latin America
The patent and the freezer: Putting Agrarian Facts in Their Place
This paper is a reflection on the growth and decline of Paraguayan scientific institutions associated with the Green Revolution. Paraguay had almost no scientific infrastructure in 1943, when American investors and politicians began a massive program to generate national expertise to fuel an export boom. This would be mirrored in the 1990s by disinvestment, personified in this paper by the demise of a vital freezer that was storing corn samples a…
Storying Monocrop Infrastructure: A Conversation on Governance, Scale, and Failure
This Engagement piece brings into dialogue two scholars, Sophie Chao and Kregg Hetherington, conducting research on monocrop systems in Southeast Asia and Latin America, respectively. Anchored in Hetherington's concept of "agribiopolitics," the interview explores monocrops through the themes of governance and failure. Governance examines the control, management, and accountability underpinning agribiopolitical regimes, including their enabling in…
The Big Flush of Montreal: On affective maintenance and infrastructural events
This article is about a brief controversy that erupted in 2015 around the City of Montreal's plan to divert 8 billion liters of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence River while it conducted critical maintenance on its sewer infrastructure. In the end, though, the Flush was non-eventful: It went ahead as planned and with no lasting effects or complaints. We suggest that the best way to understand how the City averted the crisis is through the concept …
Agribiopolitics: The health of plants and humans in the age of monocrops
The well-known story of biopolitics tells us that as Europe urbanized, security was increasingly linked to human well-being. What the story tends to leave out is the way that biopolitics also depended on the expansion of monocrop agriculture: the thriving of human populations was enabled by the thriving of non-human food crops, especially grains. As a result, new human diseases were also shadowed by new plant diseases, and a whole other, parallel…
The Government of Beans: Regulating Life in the Age of Monocrops
In "The Government of Beans: Regulating Life in the Age of Monocrops," Kregg Hetherington examines how the global trade in seemingly simple commodities like soybeans has profound and complex effects on governance, regulation, and daily life. He focuses on the intricate networks of actors, technologies, and regulations that shape the production, distribution, and consumption of soybeans, revealing how these networks create new forms of power and c…
Guerrilla Auditors: The Politics of Transparency in Neoliberal Paraguay
Guerrilla Auditors is an ethnographic account of the rise of information, transparency, and good governance in the post-Cold War era, and the effects of these concepts on Paraguay's transition to democracy. Kregg Hetherington shows that the ideal of transparent information, meant to depoliticize bureaucratic procedures, has become a battleground for a new kind of politics centered on legal interpretation and the manipulation of official documents…
Infrastructure, Environment, and Life in the Anthropocene
Peasants, Experts, Clients, and Soybeans: The Fixing of Paraguay’s Civil Service
This paper is a study of civil service reform in Paraguay during the tumultuous government of Fernando Lugo (2008-2012). On its own merits, the reform was one of the government's greatest successes. But in this paper, I show that it also had inadvertent effects that were detrimental to the rural poor, or campesinos, who made up a major portion of Lugo's political coalition. I argue that Lugo's campesino allies, in fact, lost twice as a result of …
In Paraguay, All That's New is Old: Setting fire to Congress did not set fire to the system
Society for Cultural Anthropology News
St Century Golpismo: A Nacla Roundtable
Tanks in the streets. Generals declaring victory over communism. Congress closed. Civil liberties suspended. For those of us whose knowledge of Latin America was shaped by the Cold War, these are p
Nature, Infrastructure, and the State: Rethinking Development in Latin America
Waiting for the Surveyor: Development Promises and the Temporality of Infrastructure
Tras décadas de reforma agraria en la región oriental del Paraguay, la promesa y la esperanza de una redistribución de las tierras estatales sigue presente en la apreciación que tienen los campesinos de los agrimensores del estado. Esta valorización sigue a pesar de decepciones constantes, de corrupción abierta y paternalismo abusivo. El artículo sostiene que la promesa que da el agrimensor se basa en la lógica infraestructural del desarrollo: la…
Beans Before the Law: Knowledge Practices, Responsibility, and the Paraguayan Soy Boom
This article provides an ethnographic response to the statement that soy kills ("la soja mata"), a refrain often repeated by campesino activists living on the edge of Paraguay's rapidly expanding soybean frontier. In the context of Paraguay's modernization projects since the 1960s, statements like these were easily disqualified as irrational or nonmodern. In the process, the political importance and analytic potential of the beans were dismissed,…
Paraguay’s Ongoing Struggle Over Land and Democracy
Storytelling Globalization from the Chaco and Beyond
Note on Names
Reckoning: The Ends of War in Guatemala. By Diane Nelson
Privatizing the private in rural Paraguay: Precarious lots and the materiality of rights
In this article, I look at the apparent contradiction of Paraguayan peasants who live on privately titled homesteads but who oppose the "privatization" of their land. The changes against which they are fighting are massive upheavals in the peasant landscape and subtle legal shifts that undermine the basis for land redistribution. I argue that the problem with privatizing the private reveals an underlying tension in liberal theories of property be…
The strategic incoherence of development: Marketing expertise in theWorld Development Report
This paper offers a symptomatic reading of the 2008 World Development Report on Agriculture for Development by comparing it to the World Bank's previous Report on agriculture in 1982. The differences between these two reports say less about agriculture or development than about the changing way that the Bank envisions its place in the world and tries to give its projects coherence. The most telling aspects of this shift are a progressive hollowin…
Populist Transparency
This article is an ethnographic account of the politics of transparency in Paraguay that focuses on the circulation of a particular binder full of photocopies from the land registry during Paraguay’s embattled “transition to democracy.” The concept of transparency posits a representational relationship between documents and reality – i.e. governments are transparent to the extent that they generate faithful and accessible documentary representati…
Guerrilla Auditors: The Politics of Transparency in Neoliberal Paraguay
Guerrilla Auditors is an ethnographic account of the rise of information, transparency, and good governance in the post-Cold War era, and the effects of these concepts on Paraguay's transition to democracy. Kregg Hetherington shows that the ideal of transparent information, meant to depoliticize bureaucratic procedures, has become a battleground for a new kind of politics centered on legal interpretation and the manipulation of official documents…
Beans Before the Law: Knowledge Practices, Responsibility, and the Paraguayan Soy Boom
This article provides an ethnographic response to the statement that soy kills ("la soja mata"), a refrain often repeated by campesino activists living on the edge of Paraguay's rapidly expanding soybean frontier. In the context of Paraguay's modernization projects since the 1960s, statements like these were easily disqualified as irrational or nonmodern. In the process, the political importance and analytic potential of the beans were dismissed,…
Privatizing the private in rural Paraguay: Precarious lots and the materiality of rights
In this article, I look at the apparent contradiction of Paraguayan peasants who live on privately titled homesteads but who oppose the "privatization" of their land. The changes against which they are fighting are massive upheavals in the peasant landscape and subtle legal shifts that undermine the basis for land redistribution. I argue that the problem with privatizing the private reveals an underlying tension in liberal theories of property be…
Waiting for the Surveyor: Development Promises and the Temporality of Infrastructure
Tras décadas de reforma agraria en la región oriental del Paraguay, la promesa y la esperanza de una redistribución de las tierras estatales sigue presente en la apreciación que tienen los campesinos de los agrimensores del estado. Esta valorización sigue a pesar de decepciones constantes, de corrupción abierta y paternalismo abusivo. El artículo sostiene que la promesa que da el agrimensor se basa en la lógica infraestructural del desarrollo: la…
Agribiopolitics: The health of plants and humans in the age of monocrops
The well-known story of biopolitics tells us that as Europe urbanized, security was increasingly linked to human well-being. What the story tends to leave out is the way that biopolitics also depended on the expansion of monocrop agriculture: the thriving of human populations was enabled by the thriving of non-human food crops, especially grains. As a result, new human diseases were also shadowed by new plant diseases, and a whole other, parallel…
Nature, Infrastructure, and the State: Rethinking Development in Latin America
Infrastructure, Environment, and Life in the Anthropocene
Populist Transparency
This article is an ethnographic account of the politics of transparency in Paraguay that focuses on the circulation of a particular binder full of photocopies from the land registry during Paraguay’s embattled “transition to democracy.” The concept of transparency posits a representational relationship between documents and reality – i.e. governments are transparent to the extent that they generate faithful and accessible documentary representati…
Peasants, Experts, Clients, and Soybeans: The Fixing of Paraguay’s Civil Service
This paper is a study of civil service reform in Paraguay during the tumultuous government of Fernando Lugo (2008-2012). On its own merits, the reform was one of the government's greatest successes. But in this paper, I show that it also had inadvertent effects that were detrimental to the rural poor, or campesinos, who made up a major portion of Lugo's political coalition. I argue that Lugo's campesino allies, in fact, lost twice as a result of …
The Big Flush of Montreal: On affective maintenance and infrastructural events
This article is about a brief controversy that erupted in 2015 around the City of Montreal's plan to divert 8 billion liters of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence River while it conducted critical maintenance on its sewer infrastructure. In the end, though, the Flush was non-eventful: It went ahead as planned and with no lasting effects or complaints. We suggest that the best way to understand how the City averted the crisis is through the concept …
The strategic incoherence of development: Marketing expertise in theWorld Development Report
This paper offers a symptomatic reading of the 2008 World Development Report on Agriculture for Development by comparing it to the World Bank's previous Report on agriculture in 1982. The differences between these two reports say less about agriculture or development than about the changing way that the Bank envisions its place in the world and tries to give its projects coherence. The most telling aspects of this shift are a progressive hollowin…
Los hechos nunca andan solos: The future of facts in Latin America
The Government of Beans: Regulating Life in the Age of Monocrops
In "The Government of Beans: Regulating Life in the Age of Monocrops," Kregg Hetherington examines how the global trade in seemingly simple commodities like soybeans has profound and complex effects on governance, regulation, and daily life. He focuses on the intricate networks of actors, technologies, and regulations that shape the production, distribution, and consumption of soybeans, revealing how these networks create new forms of power and c…
Storytelling Globalization from the Chaco and Beyond
Populist Transparency
This article is an ethnographic account of the politics of transparency in Paraguay that focuses on the circulation of a particular binder full of photocopies from the land registry during Paraguay’s embattled “transition to democracy.” The concept of transparency posits a representational relationship between documents and reality – i.e. governments are transparent to the extent that they generate faithful and accessible documentary representati…
Privatizing the private in rural Paraguay: Precarious lots and the materiality of rights
In this article, I look at the apparent contradiction of Paraguayan peasants who live on privately titled homesteads but who oppose the "privatization" of their land. The changes against which they are fighting are massive upheavals in the peasant landscape and subtle legal shifts that undermine the basis for land redistribution. I argue that the problem with privatizing the private reveals an underlying tension in liberal theories of property be…
The strategic incoherence of development: Marketing expertise in theWorld Development Report
This paper offers a symptomatic reading of the 2008 World Development Report on Agriculture for Development by comparing it to the World Bank's previous Report on agriculture in 1982. The differences between these two reports say less about agriculture or development than about the changing way that the Bank envisions its place in the world and tries to give its projects coherence. The most telling aspects of this shift are a progressive hollowin…
Note on Names
Reckoning: The Ends of War in Guatemala. By Diane Nelson
Paraguay’s Ongoing Struggle Over Land and Democracy
Storytelling Globalization from the Chaco and Beyond
Beans Before the Law: Knowledge Practices, Responsibility, and the Paraguayan Soy Boom
This article provides an ethnographic response to the statement that soy kills ("la soja mata"), a refrain often repeated by campesino activists living on the edge of Paraguay's rapidly expanding soybean frontier. In the context of Paraguay's modernization projects since the 1960s, statements like these were easily disqualified as irrational or nonmodern. In the process, the political importance and analytic potential of the beans were dismissed,…
Nature, Infrastructure, and the State: Rethinking Development in Latin America
Waiting for the Surveyor: Development Promises and the Temporality of Infrastructure
Tras décadas de reforma agraria en la región oriental del Paraguay, la promesa y la esperanza de una redistribución de las tierras estatales sigue presente en la apreciación que tienen los campesinos de los agrimensores del estado. Esta valorización sigue a pesar de decepciones constantes, de corrupción abierta y paternalismo abusivo. El artículo sostiene que la promesa que da el agrimensor se basa en la lógica infraestructural del desarrollo: la…
St Century Golpismo: A Nacla Roundtable
Tanks in the streets. Generals declaring victory over communism. Congress closed. Civil liberties suspended. For those of us whose knowledge of Latin America was shaped by the Cold War, these are p
In Paraguay, All That's New is Old: Setting fire to Congress did not set fire to the system
Society for Cultural Anthropology News
Infrastructure, Environment, and Life in the Anthropocene
Peasants, Experts, Clients, and Soybeans: The Fixing of Paraguay’s Civil Service
This paper is a study of civil service reform in Paraguay during the tumultuous government of Fernando Lugo (2008-2012). On its own merits, the reform was one of the government's greatest successes. But in this paper, I show that it also had inadvertent effects that were detrimental to the rural poor, or campesinos, who made up a major portion of Lugo's political coalition. I argue that Lugo's campesino allies, in fact, lost twice as a result of …
Agribiopolitics: The health of plants and humans in the age of monocrops
The well-known story of biopolitics tells us that as Europe urbanized, security was increasingly linked to human well-being. What the story tends to leave out is the way that biopolitics also depended on the expansion of monocrop agriculture: the thriving of human populations was enabled by the thriving of non-human food crops, especially grains. As a result, new human diseases were also shadowed by new plant diseases, and a whole other, parallel…
The Government of Beans: Regulating Life in the Age of Monocrops
In "The Government of Beans: Regulating Life in the Age of Monocrops," Kregg Hetherington examines how the global trade in seemingly simple commodities like soybeans has profound and complex effects on governance, regulation, and daily life. He focuses on the intricate networks of actors, technologies, and regulations that shape the production, distribution, and consumption of soybeans, revealing how these networks create new forms of power and c…
Guerrilla Auditors: The Politics of Transparency in Neoliberal Paraguay
Guerrilla Auditors is an ethnographic account of the rise of information, transparency, and good governance in the post-Cold War era, and the effects of these concepts on Paraguay's transition to democracy. Kregg Hetherington shows that the ideal of transparent information, meant to depoliticize bureaucratic procedures, has become a battleground for a new kind of politics centered on legal interpretation and the manipulation of official documents…
The Big Flush of Montreal: On affective maintenance and infrastructural events
This article is about a brief controversy that erupted in 2015 around the City of Montreal's plan to divert 8 billion liters of raw sewage into the St. Lawrence River while it conducted critical maintenance on its sewer infrastructure. In the end, though, the Flush was non-eventful: It went ahead as planned and with no lasting effects or complaints. We suggest that the best way to understand how the City averted the crisis is through the concept …
Los hechos nunca andan solos: The future of facts in Latin America
The patent and the freezer: Putting Agrarian Facts in Their Place
This paper is a reflection on the growth and decline of Paraguayan scientific institutions associated with the Green Revolution. Paraguay had almost no scientific infrastructure in 1943, when American investors and politicians began a massive program to generate national expertise to fuel an export boom. This would be mirrored in the 1990s by disinvestment, personified in this paper by the demise of a vital freezer that was storing corn samples a…
Storying Monocrop Infrastructure: A Conversation on Governance, Scale, and Failure
This Engagement piece brings into dialogue two scholars, Sophie Chao and Kregg Hetherington, conducting research on monocrop systems in Southeast Asia and Latin America, respectively. Anchored in Hetherington's concept of "agribiopolitics," the interview explores monocrops through the themes of governance and failure. Governance examines the control, management, and accountability underpinning agribiopolitical regimes, including their enabling in…
Composite ethnography: Collective encounters with emergent objects in the anthropocene
This paper introduces a methodological approach we call “composite ethnography,” a practice of lab-based qualitative research that focuses on collaboration, materiality and multiplicity. Drawing on a series of experiments running a collaborative project on urban waterways with graduate students, we argue that composite ethnography offers a way to think about the emergent research objects associated with what is increasingly referred to as the “An…
Participatory drainage: Infrastructural citizenship in Montreal’s back alleys
This article examines citizen participation in green infrastructure initiatives in two distinct back-alley drainage projects in Montreal. It studies how planners and city officials attempt to foster “citizen participation” in climate change adaptation, but often inadvertently stifle it through bureaucratic processes and narrow definitions of participation. Drawing on the concept of infrastructural citizenship, the study reveals a disconnect betwe…
The Time of Ghost Rivers
This article begins with a funeral, a memorial for a small urban river buried by the city of Montreal. Conversations about the memorial turned on the question of what it meant for a river to be dead, or how we might think of it persisting in some form: a ghost that demands active memory. Using this story as a starting point, the article explores the ghost river, its various revivals in the present, and the halting attempts by urban actors to form…
Political science (16 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Politics (9 works) · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development (8 works) · Geography (8 works) · History (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Political economy (7 works) · Agriculture (6 works)