Chokepoints: Anthropologies of the Constricted Contemporary

ABSTRACT

This article develops an anthropology of chokepoints: sites that constrict or ‘choke’ the flows of resources, information, and bodies upon which contemporary life depends. We argue that an ethnographic and analytical focus on chokepoints – ports, canals, tunnels, pipelines, transit corridors, and more – recasts longstanding anthropological concerns with the character and consequences of global circulation or ‘flow’. Chokepoints, we argue, are zones of operative paradox – where increased connectivity slows movement down; where the marginal become powerful; where local activities have distributed effects. Studied ethnographically, chokepoints reveal worlds animated neither by rapid circulation nor complete blockage, but by the dynamics of constriction and traffic. We approach the chokepoint as a site, an instrumental concept, and an analytic for exploring the constricted contemporary. Thinking with and through these choked arteries, we ask: What do chokepoints do? How? When? For whom? We conclude by offering eight dimensions of chokepoints as entry points for research.

KEYWORDS:

• Chokepoints
• circulation
• globalisation
• infrastructure
• logistics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 To be clear, this wasn’t a new phenomenon or even a new recognition. Indeed, the history of modernity can be read as a relationship to the future associated with a sense of acceleration (Koselleck 2004). Scholars locate transportation and communication networks at the centre of a longer history of space-time compression (Harvey 1989) and the lived experience of the ‘annihilation of space and time’ by speed (Schivelbusch 2014).

2 This paragraph is based on journalistic reporting (Kelley 2016; The Economist 2017). At the time of writing, the aging locks are in the process of being replaced by a new facility, which is open but not yet fully operational. 

3 This is inspired by Barry’s (2006, 243–44) conception of technological zones. He notes that the concept is a heuristic that illuminates certain relationships and forms, but, in so doing, it abstracts from the immense social complexity that exceeds its analytical framing. The chokepoint concept can be understood in this same way.

Additional information

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grants [No. 1559658, 1559684, 1560531, 1560534, and 1560537]. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.