Erosion by Design

Rethinking Innovation, Sea Defense, and Credibility in Guyana

Bibliographic Data

ID2109300
AuthorsE Vaughn (0000-0001-7127-0575, University of California, Berkeley, corresponding author), Sarah E Vaughn
Year2022
Volume64
Issue4
Pages849-877
Publication date2022-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417522000329
OpenAlexW4289942560
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited46

This essay explores the intersecting socio-material and ethical demands that engineers confront in adapting sea defenses to climate change in Guyana. It focuses on the tensions in climate adaptation that create the possibilities for theorizing innovation as a key theme of counter-modernities in the Anthropocene. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, oral histories, and archival research, I show that engineers' decision-making regarding whether or not to innovate sea defenses is a fraught process dependent upon processes of erosion and the ontological (in)stability of specific infrastructures known as groynes. To cope, engineers produce what I call 'innovation narratives' to describe how obstacles to climate adaptation are created by combinations of neocolonial empire, shapeshifting ecologies, inconsistent maintenance programs, and fiscal debt. At the same time, their efforts signal an emerging global politics of credibility that is reinforced by desires for more inclusive forms of governance rather than brute power or capitalization

Anthropocene · Corporate governance · Credibility · Economics · Environmental ethics · Management · Narrative · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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Open DOIOpen Access