You cannot contradict the engineer
Disencounters of modern technology, climate change, and power in the Peruvian Andes
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2361072 |
|---|---|
| Authors | A B Stensrud (0000-0002-1441-0313, University of Oslo, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 420-438 |
| Publication date | 2019-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Critique of Anthropology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0308-275X • E-ISSN: 1460-3721 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0308275x18821164 |
| OpenAlex | W2909062764 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 10 |
| References cited | 15 |
In the World Bank funded development program PSI Sierra, which aims to modernize irrigation technologies in the Peruvian highlands, the complexity of climate change is reduced to the manageable issues of water scarcity and lack of modern technology. By focusing on the encounters between farmers in Colca Valley and PSI engineers, the author argues that most of these encounters can best be analyzed as failed encounters or "disencounters", which confirm diverging interests and exacerbate differences. The article discusses three modes of disencounters: (a) diverging definitions of problems; (b) different technological practices in terms of flexibility, and (c) distrust emerging from an embodied history of structural inequality. The author argues that instead of supporting farmers to deal with their own-defined problems, the program-through these disencounters-produces other effects: (a) increased uncertainty; (b) the reproduction of hierarchies, and (c) the de-politicization of climate change, inequality, and poverty
Climate change · Development economics · Distrust · Economic growth · Economics · Emerging technologies · Environmental ethics · Flexibility (engineering · Inequality · Management · Market economy · Political economy · Political science · Poverty · Power (physics · Scarcity · Sociology · Technological change · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Computer Science · Decolonial Thought and Epistemologies · Law · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Ecology
The role of social institutions in indigenous Andean Pastoralists’ adaptation to climate-related water hazards
The Sisyphean cycle of inequitable state production
The social embeddedness of hydraulic engineers in the regulation of water and infrastructure in Peru
In people’s minds and on the ground
Exquisite Corpses and backward glances
Climate change reception studies in anthropology
Becoming a project beneficiary in a mining region
Missing power
The Anthropology of Water
Making Megaprojects
Political Machines
The Will to Improve
Climate change and tropical Andean glaciers
Anti-Politics Machine
The Logic of Practice
The Zimbabwe Bush Pump
Water and Power in Highland Peru
Indigenous Mestizos
Mobility, Markets and Indigenous Socialities
Water Citizenship
Encountering Development
Technology and Magic
Worlds and Knowledges Otherwise
Climate Change, Water Practices and Relational Worlds in the Andes
| Unique citing works | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,43 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2025 (7) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 10 |