Amatulli, G., & Budka, P. (Eds.). (2025). Narratives and temporalities of infrastructure: The Canadian experience [Special issue]. Anthropologica, 67(1).

Summary

The special issue of Anthropologica, “Narratives and Temporalities of Infrastructure: The Canadian Experience,” examines infrastructure as a social, political, and temporal formation. Edited by Giuseppe Amatulli and Philipp Budka, the collection brings together ethnographic analyses of how infrastructures mediate governance, environmental change, and everyday life across northern and rural Canada.

Contributors explore infrastructure as a site of contestation, relationality, and future making. Carly Dokis, Randy Restoule, and Benjamin Kelly examine First Nations water systems and the political ontologies that shape risk and responsibility. Susanna Gartler and Susan A. Crate analyze Inuvialuit and Gwich’in understandings of thawing permafrost as a transforming infrastructural relation under climate change. Giuseppe Amatulli investigates development planning and extractive futures in British Columbia resource towns, while Anna Bettini considers renewable energy narratives in rural Alberta. Kaylia Little addresses experiences of energy reliability in Iqaluit, and Katrin Schmid examines runway expansion and projected futures in Nunavut. Philipp Budka traces infrastructural disruption and entanglement in northern Manitoba. The issue concludes with a commentary by Anna Soer on infrastructures of the future and their implications for governance.

The collection highlights infrastructure as a key analytic for understanding sovereignty, temporality, and the uneven production of futures in Canada. 

The full open-access issue is available at https://cas-sca.journals.uvic.ca/index.php/anthropologica/issue/view/143