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Paper: Community transport infrastructures in Northern Manitoba, Canada

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Budka, P. (2023). Community transport infrastructures in Northern Manitoba, Canada. Paper at STS Austria Conference 2023, Vienna, Austria: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 27-29 November.

Abstract

Infrastructures are at the core of many social transformations, sociopolitical developments, and creative processes of innovation. They have become key indicators and signs of economic development, technological advancement, and modernization. Particularly in small and remote communities, infrastructures are often associated with economic growth, socio-economic well-being, and therefore communal sustainability. This paper looks into the role and meaning of transport infrastructures in sustaining remote communities in Northern Manitoba, Canada. In doing so it focuses in particular on questions of infrastructural ownership and control. As of 2021, and for the first time in history, key transport infrastructures – the Hudson Bay Railway and the Port of Churchill – are owned by a consortium of 41 northern communities. The paper draws on ethnographic data that have been collected in the region for the ERC project InfraNorth. As the case of transport infrastructures in Northern Manitoba shows, social relationships and organizational partnerships are key for planning, developing, building, continuing, and maintaining infrastructures. Infrastructure should therefore be conceptualized as more than just an operational system of technological objects.

Crossing sign outside of Churchill, MB, Canada. (Photo by Philipp Budka)

Paper: Infrastructural disruption, entanglement, and change in Northern Manitoba, Canada

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Budka, P. (2023). Infrastructural disruption, entanglement, and change in Northern Manitoba, Canada. Paper at American Anthropological Association (AAA)/Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) Annual Meeting, Toronto, Canada: Metro Toronto Convention Centre, 15-19 November.

Abstract

This paper explores transport infrastructures in the Subarctic town of Churchill, Canada. The community of 870 people in Northern Manitoba, which is not accessible via roads, is unique in terms of transport infrastructures. It is home to the only deep-water port on the Arctic Ocean that is directly linked to the North American railway system. And due to the former presence of US and Canadian military the community has a big airport, which has become key for the growing tourism industry in the “Polar Bear Capital of the World”. Churchill only exists because of these infrastructures and it has been changing together with them. This entanglement becomes particularly visible and tangible when infrastructure gets disrupted, when infrastructure fails. As in 2017, when a flooding destroyed the tracks of the Hudson Bay Railway and Churchill was without land connection for 18 months because nobody wanted to pay for repair. Five years later, however, and in the light of recent geopolitical developments, the federal and the provincial governments agreed to invest up to CA$ 147 million in the Hudson Bay Railway and the port. By discussing ethnographic findings, gathered within the ERC project InfraNorth, this paper focuses on the role of transport infrastructures in sustaining and transforming the community of Churchill.

Out of stock items at the Northern Store in Churchill, MB, Canada. (Photo by Philipp Budka)

Session: Narratives & temporalities of infrastructure

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Together with Giuseppe Amatulli (Carlton University), I am organizing the session “Narratives and Temporalities of Infrastructure: The Canadian Experience” at the meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) & the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA). The conference takes place from November 15-19, 2023 in Toronto, Canada.

The session was highlighted in AAA’s and CASCA’s official announcement of the conference program.

Snippet of AAA’s & CASCA’s announcement of the program of the 2023 meeting.

Paper: Media anthropology & the archives

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Budka, P. (2023). Media anthropology and the archives: On exploring and reconstructing sociotechnical life, histories, and biographies. Paper at EASA Media Anthropology Network Workshop: “Theorising Media and Time”, Copenhagen, Denmark: University of Copenhagen, November 9-10.

Screenshot of MyKnet.org records in the Internet Archive.

Abstract

This paper looks into digital archives and how they not only serve as facilities to collect, store, and categorize media content and artifacts, but how they mediate between the past and the present. How archives potentially contribute to the future projecting and envisioning of media as well as related technologies and practices. For that the paper explores the role of archival work in media anthropological research. It builds on material from my project on the Kuh-ke-nah Network (KO-KNET), an organization established by the tribal council Keewaytinook Okimakanak (KO) to connect remote First Nation communities in Canada’s Northwestern Ontario to the internet (e.g., Budka, 2019). I was particularly interested in exploring and reconstructing the sociotechnical life of the platform MyKnet.org (1998-2019), which was set up exclusively for First Nations people to create personal homepages within a cost- and commercial-free space on the web. By tracing the rise and fall of MyKnet.org, this paper adds to the steadily growing body of research into missing and marginalized internet histories (Driscoll & Paloque-Berges, 2017).

Besides considering historical and sociocultural contexts of First Nations’ life, it critically reviews theoretical accounts and conceptualizations of change and continuity that have been developed in an anthropology of media and technology (e.g., Pfaffenberger, 1992; Postill, 2017) as well as in postcolonial technoscience (e.g., Anderson, 2002). During fieldwork many people told me stories about their first MyKnet.org websites in the early 2000s, how they evolved, and what they meant to them. People vividly described how their homepages were designed, structured, and linked to other pages. To deepen my interpretation and understanding of these narratives, I used the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to recover archived versions of these websites whenever possible. Thus, the Wayback Machine became an archaeological tool for my anthropological research into the sociotechnical life and history of MyKnet.org and the digital biographies of its users.

References

Anderson, W. (2002). Introduction: Postcolonial technoscience. Social Studies of Science, 32(5–6), 643–658.

Budka, P. (2019). Indigenous media technologies in “the digital age”: Cultural articulation, digital practices, and sociopolitical concepts. In S. S. Yu & M. D. Matsaganis (Eds.), Ethnic media in the digital age (pp. 162-172). New York: Routledge.

Driscoll, K., & Paloque-Berges, C. (2017). Searching for missing “net histories”. Internet Histories, 1(1–2), 47–59.

Pfaffenberger, B. (1992). Social anthropology of technology. Annual Review of Anthropology, 21, 491–516.

Postill, J. (2017). The diachronic ethnography of media: From social changing to actual social changes. Moment. Journal of Cultural Studies, 4(1), 19–43.

Paper: Tourism & transport infrastructures in the “Polar Bear Capital of the World”

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Budka, P. (2023). Tourism and transport infrastructures in the “Polar Bear Capital of the World”. Paper at International Society for Ethnology and Folklore (SIEF) 16th Congress, Brno, Czech Republic: Masaryk University, June 7-10.

Abstract

This paper explores how tourism and transport infrastructures are entangled in the town of Churchill in Northern Manitoba, Canada. Situated at the junction of the boreal forest, the Arctic tundra, and the Hudson Bay, the community of 870 people has become known as the “Polar Bear Capital of the World”. While early bear watching projects in Churchill already started in the 1970s, tourism really exploded when polar bears became worldwide symbols of global warming and climate change at the end of the 20th century.

This tremendous growth in tourism was mainly enabled by the transport infrastructure of a town which has no road connection. The Hudson Bay Railway, which was originally built to ship grain from Canada’s prairie provinces to the seaport of Churchill, now also brings tourists and their supplies. The same goes for Churchill’s airport, which was constructed for military purposes during the Second World War and now serves as transportation hub for tourists, tour operators, and their cargo.

By discussing ethnographic findings, this paper focuses on the role of tourism, as a key economic driver, and its connection to transport infrastructures in sustaining and transforming the town of Churchill. In doing so, it also critically reflects upon the very notion of sustainability (transformation). This study is one of several case studies in the ERC project InfraNorth, which looks into the affordances of transport infrastructures on a pan-Arctic scale.

Professional photographers during bear season in Churchill, MB, Canada. (Photo by Philipp Budka)

Paper: Digital & transport infrastructures in remote Canada

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Budka, P. (2023). Digital and transport infrastructures in remote Canada: Notes on ownership and control. Paper at InfraNorth Workshop “Ethnographies of Infrastructure”, Vienna, Austria: University of Vienna, May 22.

Abstract

Infrastructures are at the core of many social transformations, sociopolitical developments, and creative processes of innovation. They have become key indicators and signs of economic development, technological advancement, and modernization. Particularly in small and remote communities, infrastructures are often associated with economic growth, socio-economic well-being, and therefore communal sustainability.

This paper looks into the role of digital and transport infrastructures in remote communities in Canada by discussing questions of infrastructural ownership and control. In doing so, it draws on completed ethnographic fieldwork on the development and appropriation of digital infrastructures in Northwestern Ontario as well as on ongoing fieldwork in Northern Manitoba on the affordances of transport infrastructures in relation to sustaining communities; the latter being conducted within the ERC project InfraNorth.

Both cases show that the creation of social relationships and organizational partnerships are key for the planning, developing, building, continuing, and maintaining of infrastructures. At least from an ethnographic and anthropological perspective, infrastructure is therefore much more than just an operational system of technological objects.

Map of broadband internet connectivity in Sandy Lake First Nation, ON, Canada. (Photo by Philipp Budka)

Lecture: Von der Cyber Anthropologie zur Digitalen Anthropologie

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On invitation of Christoph Bareither, I gave a lecture on the formations, the differences and similarities of cyber anthropology and digital anthropology for the colloquium “Digital Anthropology” at the University of Tübingen, Germany (in German). The talk built on a text published in 2019 for the edited volume Ritualisierung – Mediatisierung – Performance. Find the chapter as PDF file below:

Budka, P. (2019). Von der Cyber Anthropologie zur Digitalen Anthropologie. Über die Rolle der Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie im Verstehen soziotechnischer Lebenswelten. In M. Luger, F. Graf & P. Budka (Eds.), Ritualisierung – Mediatisierung – Performance (pp. 163-188). Göttingen: V&R Unipress/Vienna University Press. https://doi.org/10.14220/9783737005142.163

Lecture Abstract

Anhand ausgewählter wissenschaftstheoretischer und -historischer Aspekte zeichnet Philipp Budka in seinem Vortrag die Entwicklung sowie die Gemeinsamkeiten und Unterschiede der Forschungsfelder der Cyber Anthropologie und der Digitalen Anthropologie nach. Beide sind bestrebt, zu einem besseren Verständnis komplexer soziotechnischer Systeme in unterschiedlichen Gesellschaften beizutragen. Während die Cyber Anthropologie – der Kybernetik folgend – sich nicht nur mit kommunikationstechnischen, sondern auch mit biologisch-technischen Grundlagen und Veränderungen von Systemen und Organisationsformen befasst, fokussiert die Digitale Anthropologie dezidiert auf digitale Technologien, Medien oder Infrastrukturen. Wie Budkas Vortrag verdeutlicht, gestaltet die Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie die interdisziplinäre Auseinandersetzung mit den komplexen Beziehungen zwischen Mensch, Technik und Technologie – sowie die damit verbundenen Phänomene, Prozesse und Praktiken – entscheidend mit.

Internet café in Toronto, ON, Canada. (Photo by Philipp Budka)

Presentation: Cultural dimensions of digital ethics

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Budka, P. (2023). Cultural dimensions of digital ethics: Anthropological notes and perspectives. Presentation at Academies for Global Innovation and Digital Ethics (AGIDE) Workshop, Vienna, Austria: Austrian Academy of Sciences, 17-18 April.

From the AGIDE workshop brochure:

“The digital transformation is changing the way we live, the way our societies and economies function, and is shifting global power relations. Moreover, it has brought about an unprecedented degree of global interconnectedness. In cooperation with other Academies of Sciences worldwide, Academies for Global Innovation and Digital Ethics (AGIDE) seeks to embrace the socio-cultural variety of perspectives from all over the world and to further explore differences and similarities without forcing uniformity or consensus. The first AGIDE workshop will focus on the main questions of the project, that is, how various regions and cultures experience digitalization and whether particular ethical challenges arise due to various cultural dimensions. A series of renowned international speakers were invited to investigate, beyond stereotypes, in which ways cultural dimensions influence how technologies are welcomed, perceived and dealt with. Three main questions were were identified to guide the discussions at the workshop:

1) What is your vision of a ‘good digital future’ within your cultural context or region?

2) When you step out of the ‘bubble’ of the expert community, what are the views of lay people you meet ‘outside’?

3) What is the most annoying cultural stereotype with regard to approaches to digitization? Why do you find it annoying and what would you change about that stereotype?”

I commented on these questions by providing an anthropological perspective.

Paper: Relational infrastructures

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Budka, P. (2023). Relational infrastructures: Transportation and sustainability in the Subarctic town of Churchill, Canada. Paper at Biennial Conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society, Rovaniemi, Finland: Arctic Centre, 21-23 March.

Abstract

This paper explores how transport infrastructures are interconnected and entangled in the Subarctic town of Churchill, Canada. In doing so, it looks into the creation and maintenance of these infrastructures as well as into the role that social, political, and economic relations play here. It furthermore examines how such infrastructural entanglements contribute to the sustainability of the town. Churchill is one of several field sites in the ERC project InfraNorth, which looks into the affordances of transport infrastructures on a pan-Arctic scale through an anthropological lens.

Churchill, a town of 870 people, is unique in terms of transport infrastructure. The town, which is not accessible via roads, is home to Canada’s only deep-water port on the Arctic Ocean. This is the only harbor in the American (Sub)Arctic with a direct link to the North American railway system. In addition, Churchill has a relatively big airport, which was originally built by the military and is now supporting in particular the growing tourism industry. The community of Churchill only exists because of these infrastructures and it has been changing together with them.

By discussing ethnographic and historical findings, this paper focuses on how this infrastructural entanglement becomes particularly visible in times of infrastructural breakdown and failure. When in 2017 a flooding washed-out the railway tracks and Churchill was without train connection for 18 months, the town and its inhabitants had to rely on air transportation and on a network of winter trails to transport goods and supplies. This has had severe consequences for this remote Subarctic town.

Mural in the Town of Churchill created for the Seawalls Churchill project in 2017; in the back the Port of Churchill, MB, Canada. (Photo by Philipp Budka)

Seminar: Digital Visuality & Popular Culture

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Photo by Gian Cescon on Unsplash

The seminar “Digital Visuality and Popular Culture” for the MA program CREOLE at the University of Vienna provides an overview about digital visuality as a key phenomenon of contemporary visual culture and its connection to popular culture. By working on ethnographic research projects, students explore the diversity of digital practices, their visual dimension and their meaning for popular cultural processes and phenomena.

With the advent of digital media and technologies, internet-based devices and services, mobile computing as well as software applications and social media platforms new opportunities and challenges have come to the forefront in the anthropological research of visual culture. Digital media technologies have become ubiquitous means of visual communication, interaction and representation. For anthropology it is of particular interest how people engage with digital media technologies and content, how “the digital” is embedded in everyday life and how it relates to different sociocultural phenomena.

One of these phenomena is popular culture: processes and practices related to the production, circulation and consumption of, for example, music, film, fashion and advertisements as well as the construction and mediation of celebrities. Moreover, popular culture is closely connected to other cultural phenomena such as fan culture, public culture and participatory culture. Fans, for instance, engage in various forms of visual productivity and play a crucial role in the creation and circulation of cultural artifacts related to their fandom such as memes.

By working on different case studies, students get a comparative overview about digital visuality and visual aspects of popular culture. Students conduct ethnographic projects and engage with key questions. What theoretical concepts and analytical categories of sociality can be used to study visual and popular culture? How does digital visuality constitute and mediate cultural performances and rituals? How do social media platforms enable and change visual culture and communication?

Blog Post: “Have you seen a polar bear?”

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Budka, P. (2023). “Have you seen a polar bear?” – Transportation during “bear season” in Churchill, Manitoba. InfraNorth – Building Arctic Futures: Transport Infrastructures and Sustainable Northern Communities Blog, 28 February.

Tourism is big in Churchill, a town of 870 people situated at the junction of the boreal forest, the Subarctic tundra, and the Hudson Bay in Northern Manitoba, Canada. And tourism is closely entangled with transport infrastructures, such as roads, trails, railway, and airport. Through these infrastructures, tourists are able to reach the town and move around in the community and the nearby area. Tourism operators use these infrastructures to move not only people, but also supplies, equipment, and fuel.

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“Welcome to Churchill” sign at Churchill Airport, MB, Canada. (Photo by Philipp Budka)

Paper: Sustainability transformation & transport infrastructures in Northern Manitoba, Canada

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Budka, P. (2023). Sustainability transformation and transport infrastructures in Northern Manitoba, Canada. Paper at Arctic Science Summit Week (ASSW2023), Vienna, Austria: University of Vienna, 17-24 February.

Abstract

This paper explores from an anthropological perspective how infrastructural entanglements relate to sustainability transformation of/in the town of Churchill in Northern Manitoba, Canada. Situated at the junction of the boreal forest, the Arctic tundra, and the Hudson Bay, the community of 870 people has become well-known as the “Polar Bear Capital of the World”. But Churchill is also unique in terms of transport infrastructures. Whereas the town is not accessible via roads, it is home of Canada’s only deep-water port on the Arctic Ocean. This port is the only harbor in the American (Sub)Arctic with a direct link to the North American railway system. And due to former military presence, the town also has a relatively big airport, which has become key for the growing tourism industry.

Churchill only exists because of these transport infrastructures and it has been changing together with this built environment. Only recently and in the light of geopolitical developments, the federal and the provincial governments agreed to invest up to CA$ 147 million to upgrade the Hudson Bay Railway and the Port of Churchill. By discussing ethnographic findings, this paper focuses on the role of transport infrastructures in sustaining and transforming the community. At the same time, it critically reflects upon the very notion of sustainability (transformation) from an anthropological and cross-cultural angle. This study is one of several case studies in the ERC project InfraNorth, which looks into the affordances of transport infrastructures on a pan-Arctic scale.

The Town of Churchill, MB, Canada, from a helicopter; in the back the Port of Churchill. (Photo by Philipp Budka)

New in Paperback: Theorising Media & Conflict

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The edited volume Theorising Media and Conflict (Berghahn Books, 2020) is now available in paperback.
The volume’s introduction by Birgit Bräuchler and me remains openly accessible.

Abstract

The book brings together anthropologists as well as media and communication scholars to collectively address the elusive and complex relationship between media and conflict. Through epistemological and methodological reflections and the analyses of various case studies from around the globe, this volume provides evidence for the co-constitutiveness of media and conflict and contributes to their consolidation as a distinct area of scholarship.

Article: Indigenous media

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Budka, P. (2022). Indigenous media: Anthropological perspectives and historical notes. In E. Costa, P. G. Lange, N. Haynes & J. Sinanan (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Media Anthropology. New York & London: Routledge.

Abstract

Indigenous people have been appropriating media technologies for decades to communicate within and outside their communities, to resist outside domination and for self-determination. This chapter traces developments in the anthropological study of Indigenous media, particularly since the 1990s when research in this field co-contributed to the widening area of media anthropology.

After reviewing conceptualisations of cultural activism and social change in the context of Indigenous media engagements, it analyses the Indigenization of media by considering locally specific practices of media appropriation, global processes of identity-making and the technological and infrastructural dimension of media projects.

By drawing on ethnographic examples from the anthropological literature and from the author’s fieldwork in Canada, the chapter argues that there is a strong sense of sociopolitical activism and agency in Indigenous people’s collective engagements with media. At the same time, Indigenous people’s media practices are related to mundane necessities of everyday communication, social networking, family bonding or individual self-expression.

This chapter concludes that media technologies have become an important part of Indigeneity, as a global idea and as a relational practice of collective identity formation, which coexists with the sense of belonging to a distinct local Indigenous community.

Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN) Headquarter, Winnipeg, MB, Canada. (Photo by Philipp Budka)
Wawatay – Native Communications Society, Sioux Lookout, ON, Canada. (Photo by Philipp Budka)

Lecture: Introduction to Social & Cultural Anthropology

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It is for the last time that the lecture “Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology” in the BA program “Social and Cultural Anthropology” at the University of Vienna will be held. 11 years ago, the late Elke Mader and Wolfgang Kraus conceived and organized this lecture for the first time.

This winter term, I have the pleasure to give this lecture one last time – again with contributions by Wolfgang Kraus – before a new curriculum and introduction lecture will be implemented.

The lecture has been using Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s seminal book Small Places, Large Issues as main teaching and learning resource. I find it therefore fitting to end this journey with a quote from his volume:

“Anthropology tries to account for the social and cultural variation in the world, but a crucial part of the anthropological project also consists in conceptualising and understanding similarities between social systems and human relationships.” (Eriksen, 2015: 2)

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