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The Community, Culture and Global Studies 2022 Speaker Series: Critical Infrastructure and Coloniality
March 31, 2022 at 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
FreeThe Community, Culture and Global Studies 2022 Speaker Series invites you to attend a presentation by Dr. Andrew Curley and Dr. Rafi Arefin.
Dr. Curley will address the theme of critical infrastructure and coloniality by linking the establishment of water infrastructure in Arizona with the marginalization and disempowerment of tribes whose lands and water are diverted for urban expansion. His talk is titled The Central Arizona Project and the taking of Diné (Navajo) resources.
Dr. Arefin will draw from his work on the politics of waste in Egypt and will trace the historical roots of enduring colonial logics in Cairo’s sanitation infrastructure. He shows how colonial engineers, development institutions and international capital have commodified waste dispossessing semi-formal waste workers and creating threats to urban health.
About the Presenters
Dr. Andrew Curley is an Assistant Professor in the School of Geography, Development and Environment at the University of Arizona. His research focuses on the everyday incorporation of Indigenous nations into colonial economies. His work builds on ethnographic research to explore how Indigenous communities understand coal, energy, land, water, infrastructure, and development in an era of energy transition and climate change.
Dr. Rafi Arefin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of British Columbia. His research examines the complex geographies of waste, power and inequality in multiple sites and systems, from garbage and sewage in Egypt to the afterlives of disposed batteries, in North America. His new project investigates the political ecology of surveillance in wastewater epidemiology and the microbiology of the built environment.
