<Varia>The Umwelten of Infrastructure: A Stroll along (and inside) Phnom Penh's Sewage Pipes

Abstract

What has the Umwelten of the ethologist Jacob Von Uexküll to do with the anthropology of infrastructure? Here, I address this question by taking the reader on an ethnographic tour around, and into, Phnom Penh's sewage systems. In common usage, infrastructures form the material basis for the provision of social services - as in roads and railroad tracks. Infrastructure has thus been viewed by conventional engineering and social science as a layer added on top of, or sunk into, nature. Meanwhile, the umwelten of different animals are said to vary because of their different bodies and perceptual apparatuses. Yet, over time, bodies and perceptual faculties are subject to ontological transformation as they enter into new relations with other beings. An ethnographic stroll with the sludge, animals, trees and plants, in and around Phnom Penh's sewage systems, allows me to address the implications of these ontological entwinements and transformations for an anthropological understanding of both infrastructure and Umwelts.