• Essay 2 (30%): (Due 2nd September @ 23:59)
For the essay you need to complete a 2000 to 2500-word essay on Lecture Question 17. In the essay we expect you to critically engage with the readings and establish a clear argument. You must draw on the prescribed and additional readings as listed in this course outline first, but you are encouraged to do further reading and expand your references with other literature you may find relevant to your topic and your argument. But the prescribed material should reflect in the concepts you use.
Use at least 3 prescribed readings.
3 consecutive words or more taken from a text without quoting and in-text referencing will be considered as plagiarism and will result in academic consequences, same is granted for theory used without reference to the prescribed material.
Harvard referencing: ….(Ahmann, 2018:142). According to Nixon, …(2011:18).
Lecture 17
Please answer and/or argue using this question as a guide as long as it includes the main concepts.
Question: How can the concepts of “slow infrastructure” and Rob Nixon’s concept of “slow violence” add to our understandings of development and fragile infrastructures in a time of climate crisis?
Ahmann, C. “’Its exhausting to create an event out of nothing’: Slow violence and the manipulation of time”. Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 33, Issue 1, pp. 142-171
Matt Barlow & Georgina Drew (2020): Slow infrastructures in times of crisis: unworking speed and convenience, Postcolonial Studies, DOI: 10.1080/13688790.2020.1804105.
Nixon, R. 2011. “Introduction.” Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
Additional resources:
Goldblatt, B. & Hassim, S. 2022. ‘Grass in the cracks’: Gender, Social Reproduction and climate justice in the Xolobeni struggle.
Ahmann, C. “Waste to Energy: Garbage prospects and subjunctive politics in late-industrial Baltimore”. American Ethnologist, 46(3): 328-342.
Schwenkel, C. 2015. “Spectacular infrastructure and its breakdown in socialist Vietnam.” American Ethnologist, Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 520–534,
