Article ID: CBB274420556

“¡Se Bota El Tanque!”: Housing, infrastructure, and the sounds of water in Havana’s domestic spaces (2019)

unapi

Vincent Andrisani (Author)


Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society
Volume: 2
Issue: 1
Pages: 442-457


Publication Date: 2019
Edition Details: Thematic Cluster: Frail Modernities: Latin American Infrastructures between Repair and Ruination
Language: English

An enduring dimension of everyday life in Havana is the city’s architectural and infrastructural precarity. More than half the water supply is lost before it reaches residents, the asphalt on the streets is crumbling, and a building collapses approximately every third day. Such conditions have prompted scholars to conceive of the city as “dystopian” [Coyula, M. 2011. “The Bitter Trinquennium and the Dystopian City: Autopsy of a Utopia.” In Havana Beyond the Ruins: Cultural Mappings After 1989, edited by A. Birkenmaier, and E. K. Whitfield, 31–52. Durham, NC: Duke University Press], a “non-city” [Redruello, L. 2011. “Touring Havana in the Work of Ronaldo Menéndez.” In Havana Beyond the Ruins: Cultural Mappings After 1989, edited by A. Birkenmaier and E. K. Whitfield, 229–245. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.] or a city of “fleeting dreams” [Porter, A. L. 2008. “Fleeting Dreams and Flowing Goods: Citizenship and Consumption in Havana Cuba.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 31 (1): 134–149], whereby the disrepair of the physical environment is symbolic of the decaying political agency of the local population [Ponte, A. J. 2011. “La Habana: City and Archive.” In Havana Beyond the Ruins: Cultural Mappings After 1989, edited by A. Birkenmaier, and E. K. Whitfield, 249–269]. Yet, residents continue to inhabit the city through practices that are at once creative, spontaneous, and collective. Building on existing discussions of Latin American informality [Fischer, B. 2014. “Introduction.” In Cities From Scratch: Poverty and Informality in Urban Latin America, edited by B. Fischer, B. McCann, and J. Auyero, 1–8. Durham, N.C, London: Duke University Press], I argue that an overlooked dimension of Havana’s everyday life emerges through tacit, communicatory practices made possible through sound and listening. Through both ethnographic writing and audio media production, this multimedia project illustrates a neighborhood response to malfunctioning water delivery infrastructure. This localized episode offers a vivid example of what ethnomusicologist Ana María Ochoa-Gautier refers to as the “aural public sphere” [2012. “Social Transculturation, Epistemologies of Purification and the Aural Public Sphere in Latin America.” In The Sound Studies Reader, edited by J. Sterne, 388–404. London: Routledge.] while giving life to a story of resilience that can resonate in cities across Latin America.

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Associated with

Article Raquel Velho; Sebastián Ureta (2019) Frail modernities: Latin American infrastructures between repair and ruination. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society (pp. 428-441). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB274420556/

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Authors & Contributors
Jensen, Casper Bruun
Prince K Guma
Aiduan Borrion
Claire Pelgrims
Tatiana Acevedo-Guerrero
Philip Feldmann
Concepts
Cities and towns
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Infrastructure
Mobility
Land transportation
Computers and computing
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
Places
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Cambodia
East Asia
London (England)
Barranquilla
Bangkok, Thailand
Institutions
Cisco Systems, Inc.
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