Books by Lukas Ley
University of Minnesota Press, 2021
Building on Borrowed Time takes us to a place where a flood crisis has already arrived—where ev... more Building on Borrowed Time takes us to a place where a flood crisis has already arrived—where everyday residents are not waiting for the effects of climate change but are in fact already living with it. Ley shows how life in coastal Southeast Asia is defined not by the temporality of climate science but by the lived experience of tidal flooding.
Articles by Lukas Ley
Roadsides , 2024
Drawing on ongoing ethnographic research in European port cities, this article demonstrates how t... more Drawing on ongoing ethnographic research in European port cities, this article demonstrates how the use of sustainable concrete taps the liveliness of shore ecologies to stage alternative futures of capitalism. I focus on Living Ports, a pilot project carried out in the city of Vigo (Spain), which aims at reducing the negative impact of concrete on the marine environment. Combining photographs obtained from scientists studying the durability of modified concrete with data from participant observation, I describe the labour of humans and nonhumans that goes into producing a type of “bioinfrastructure,” a vibrant set of lithic materials and organisms that responds to and becomes vital in maintaining economic growth (Acosta and Ley 2023: 3). The case of Living Ports deserves attention because it shows how port operators can respond to growing concerns about the sustainability of port infrastructures. Changing concrete to factor in the wellbeing of wildlife reframes port infrastructure technologically and culturally. The project, however, may turn nature into a mere spectacle in order to justify continuous economic growth. In that case, it could end up tightening ports’ grip on the productivity of marine ecologies.
Roadsides , 2023
Cities rely on numerous infrastructures to support life: pipes, cables, antennas, roads and other... more Cities rely on numerous infrastructures to support life: pipes, cables, antennas, roads and other technologies facilitate the distribution and use of water, energy, information and people. Current theories of urban flows undergirded by infrastructural systems, however, often focus on the perseverance of human life at the expense of other lifeforms. But does this conceptualization of life limit our understanding of the true liveliness of urban infrastructure? The contributions to this themed collection interrogate urban infrastructure as sociobiological configurations that not only sustain life in the city but in turn are constituted, patterned and modified by it.
Urban Studies, 2023
Describing the artistic and curatorial work of the Indonesian art collective Hysteria over the la... more Describing the artistic and curatorial work of the Indonesian art collective Hysteria over the last 15 years, this paper considers public art as a practice of devising relations with various urban sites and actors. I focus on Hysteria’s core strategy of organising art festivals and exhibitions in kampungs– working-class urban neighbourhoods – with the aim of creating novel spaces for artistic expression, showing that the kampung serves both as inspiration for artistic experimentation and improvised public space in the absence of proper art infrastructure. Further, kampung space allows economically precarious artists to engage the city, that is, explore its social make-up and uncover economic opportunities. A long-term perspective on Hysteria’s work reveals that activities provide members as well as involved artists with valuable urban knowledge and connections. Turning the kampung into a subject of public art and infrastructure of encounter through what I call the ‘kampung formula’, Hysteria managed to establish itself as a representative of the poor and key interlocutor of urban development agencies, becoming eligible for a number of pro-poor project grants. Describing the relational network of art, kampung and the wider city, I therefore propose to see public art as a kind of ‘infrastructural adventurism’ that provides glimpses into various aspects of both formal and informal economies in the Indonesian city and extracts knowledge and value from marginal urban places.
Geoforum, 2018
This article investigates stagnation as a product of hydrosocial relations in light of ethnograph... more This article investigates stagnation as a product of hydrosocial relations in light of ethnographic research conducted in the port city of Semarang, Indonesia. In Semarang’s coastal north, river water spills daily into neighbourhoods during high tide, and often stagnates in houses and streets. While recent studies have shown that water governance is a form of social control, reproducing (infra)structures of subjugation and social inequality, little attention has been paid to the margins of water infrastructure, especially in cities. By focusing on stagnation, this article examines hydrosocial arrangements in the margins of postcolonial drainage infrastructure. When the peripheral and densely populated neighbourhoods in Semarang’s north are flooded during high tide, residents resort to private or semi-public pumps to get rid of stagnant water. Residents deplore insufficient state attention to their area, reflected in collapsing or seeping riverbanks. A relatively reliable flood prevention is the timely and regular raising of house floors and streets. The municipality responds to dramatic rates of land subsidence (10–15 cm/year) by raising roads and riverbanks. Yet, many dwellings along the Banger River have been destroyed by intruding sea water and left behind in ruins, suggesting a permanent failure of the city’s drainage system. Residents bear the brunt of supplementary infrastructural labour, their efforts of infrastructural repair and maintenance sustaining a bare minimum of safety. The article mobilizes Elizabeth Povinelli’s concept of quasi-events to understand the hydrosocial relations that shape peoples’ precarious relation with drainage infrastructure as unequal yet generalized. Quasi-events, that is, efforts to hold water at bay, suck energy and resources from marginalized residents. As such, the article argues that the margin of the hydrosocial is integral to the political configuration of land and water.
Indonesia, 2018
In 2015, I attended a late night subdistrict meeting in Kemijen, a coastal neighborhood located i... more In 2015, I attended a late night subdistrict meeting in Kemijen, a coastal neighborhood located in northeast Semarang and built on former marshland. The balai (hall) was teeming with people and the atmosphere was official. A projector was displaying a resident-produced documentary on tidal flooding. The lurah (head of the subdistrict administration) had driven down from his upstream residence and was accompanied by his formally dressed wife. It turned out he had to make an important announcement concerning the mayor's neighborhood inspection, scheduled to occur in about two months. Namely, that the mayor couldn't make it. The lurah began his speech by expressing his sincere disappointment about the cancellation to those in attendance—various Kemijen neighborhood figures, leaders, and residents. All had been awaiting the visit of Semarang's highest state official as an opportunity to voice local ambitions and showcase community efforts to improve the neighborhood. Then, the lurah added that there was yet another chance to receive the mayor, as he had offered them an alternative date—a weekend one month hence.
EASA Network of Ethnographic Theory Guest Reading Lists , 2020
This reading list covers studies within anthropology and cognate disciplines that deal with situa... more This reading list covers studies within anthropology and cognate disciplines that deal with situations where people are stuck in the present. This is not some warped time loop or hole in the matrix out of a sci-fi flick, though conjuring up such images might be of use to some. As a social scientific concept, the chronic present rather attempts to account for the fact that certain individuals or communities entertain unproductive relationships to time and have little to no say in the making of the future. Assuming an unchanging present allows us to examine the cultural and social configurations that tie people to a certain position in time. The chronic present further reckons with the emotional and bodily effects of an advanced encapsulation by the present by framing the perception and experience of stagnation and repetition.
Environment and Planning C, 2019
This theme issue re-engages the ghost of Wittfogel in ethnographically grounded conversations aro... more This theme issue re-engages the ghost of Wittfogel in ethnographically grounded conversations around the imbrication of water, power, and infrastructure. It examines social and political relations in ways that take their tensions and correspondences with water seriously, as Wittfogel did half a century ago, but in a less monolithic and totalizing manner. Instead, the contributions pay attention to the situated, partial, multiple, and open-ended encounters that (un)make these links. Together, the papers collected in this theme issue build a critical conversation around the role of water in configuring and reproducing power. Its major threads are the construction of authority through water, the social complexity of water relations, and the interrelationships between water, infrastructure , and political rule. Studies of the links between water management and social relations have long moved on from Karl Wittfogel's (1981 [1957]) theses of hydraulic despotism. His argument-that large-scale centralized water provision infrastructures would foster an autocratic political regime-has not only been disproven by archaeological and anthropological evidence , which suggest that autocratic regimes predate extensive water infrastructure, and that water provision may come with very different political arrangements (e.g. Davies, 2009; Obertreis et al., 2016), but it has also been rightly criticized for having an imperialist political agenda related to the historical backdrop of its inception-the Cold War-and
Austrian Journal of South-East Asian Studies, Jun 2016
This article describes flood management in poor communities of Semarang, a second-tier city on th... more This article describes flood management in poor communities of Semarang, a second-tier city on the north coast of Central Java, Indonesia. Using ethnographic material from participant observation and interviews, the article argues that flood management upholds an ecological status quo – a socioecological system that perpetuates the potential of crisis and structures of vulnerability. While poor residents have developed coping mechanisms, such community efforts follow the logic of maintaining a precarious minimum of safety. Designed in 2009, Dutch-Indonesian anti-flood infrastructure (polder) is supposed to put an end to tidal flooding, locally called rob. As a short-term project, the polder promises to regulate water levels and improve the lives of local residents. While it wants to make flood control transparent and accountable to riverside communities, the project ultimately fails to escape the institutional logic of chronic crisis management. By investigating the temporality and politics of the polder project, this article aims at contributing empirical and theoretical insights to scholarship on socioecological conflicts and crisis.
The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory, 2017
Jacobs’s contribution to social theory is a constant reminder that scholars have a responsibility... more Jacobs’s contribution to social theory is a constant reminder that scholars have a responsibility toward society and the environment. While starting out as a critic of modernist planning and defender of urban diversity, the late Jane Jacobs can be considered an influential commentator on the political processes that shape our experience of an urban world.
Social Anthropology, 2021
The global climatic and ecological crisis becomes more apparent with every passing year. Shocking... more The global climatic and ecological crisis becomes more apparent with every passing year. Shocking images of the burning Congo Basin, of bushfires devastating aboriginal land in Australia, of thawing permafrost in Siberia and mass coral bleaching have gone viral. Countless studies from independent scientists have linked these events to climate change and revealed their serious effects on human wellbeing (Oreskes 2004; Watts et al. 2018). These catastrophes killed tens of thousands of people and destroyed the livelihoods of millions. Yet, so far, linking them to climate change has not generated meaningful political action (Swyngedouw 2011; Hornborg 2017) to decrease consumption (Wilk 2009), stop fossil fuel extraction, reduce pollution or halt ecological destruction. Faced with this inaction, a new type of climate activism recently emerged in Europe.
Book chapters by Lukas Ley
Delta Life: Exploring Dynamic Environments where Rivers Meet the Sea, 2021
Cons (2017: 47) recently speculated that we live in a moment of ‘global flooding’: periodic inund... more Cons (2017: 47) recently speculated that we live in a moment of ‘global flooding’: periodic inundations haunt cities the world over, turning whole regions into swamps and leaving a ‘dampness’ in their wake. This swamping has become a pivotal human experience. Of course, people wonder whether they will be able to survive in these liquefied, dank environments. This is becoming a more common experience as greater numbers of people are confronted with swampiness (see also Ley 2018), which is why Cons (2017: 52) urges anthropologists to recalibrate: what if the damp is becoming the norm in terms of city planning and subjectivity, an integral feature of the urban experience?
Disastrous Times: Reconfiguring Environments in Urbanizing Asia, 2020
Book reviews by Lukas Ley
Anthropology Book Forum, 2024
“A Book of Waves,” the third monograph by Helmreich, shows how to think with waves. Helmreich fir... more “A Book of Waves,” the third monograph by Helmreich, shows how to think with waves. Helmreich first learned to read waves as a bodysurfer. As an ethnographer of science, he set out to study them in depth. The result is a thorough reading of waves and how they “convolve” ocean scientists’ subjectivities, markets, and planetary crises.
H- Environment, 2024
The Pulse of the Earth by Adam Bobette invites readers to get up close to the formation of the ea... more The Pulse of the Earth by Adam Bobette invites readers to get up close to the formation of the earth. This book is about active volcanoes in Indonesia, whose craters animate both geological and cultural discourses. Attending to the pulse of the earth requires a special sensory apparatus, one that captures more than depth, age, and lithology. It demands a careful genealogy of scientific claims and other forms of “geologizing.”
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2023
It is remarkable when research groups make themselves and the voices of their research participan... more It is remarkable when research groups make themselves and the voices of their research participants heard outside of academic circles. Instead of focusing solely on scholarly output, the DELTA project around environmental anthropologist Franz Krause made it a priority to reach and connect with diverse audiences. Over the last few years, the project organized an exhibition and hosted public workshops to communicate research findings. Currently, Krause is working on a graphic novel with Inuvialuk artist Karis Gruben, a collaboration covered by the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). It was in this spirit that Krause and three students affiliated with DELTA conceived Delta worlds: life between land and water, an illustrated and bilingual companion to the exhibition.
Editorials by Lukas Ley
Social Anthropology, 2021
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Books by Lukas Ley
Articles by Lukas Ley
Book chapters by Lukas Ley
Book reviews by Lukas Ley
Editorials by Lukas Ley
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