Engineering Vulnerability

Sarah E. Vaughn is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley.

• Abbreviations  viiTechnical Notes  ixAcknowledgments  xiIntroduction: “Where Would I Go? There Was No Place with No Water”  11. Disaster Evidence  292. The Racial Politics of Settlers  473. Engineering, Archives, and Experts  694. Compensation and Resettlement  975. Love Stories  1276. Accountability and the Militarization of Technoscience  1537. The Ordinary  177Conclusion: Materializing Race and Climate Change  197Notes  205References  221Index  247

“With deep erudition and empathy, Sarah E. Vaughn illuminates the visions of society inherent to climate adaptation policy. She skillfully uncovers the stakes of this new world for us with a meticulous case study of the politics and technoscience of climate change in Guyana. Dynamic ways of living and being-the social infrastructure of climate adaptation-are revealed to be as critical as the structural projects and economic plans that undergird them. A highly original and major contribution that compels a reconsideration of environmental justice frameworks and that manifests the bold green shoots of renewed social theory.” - Alondra Nelson, Harold F. Linder Professor, Institute for Advanced Study "The environmental ethics that builds from Vaughn’s counter-racial thinking makes accountability imaginable across racial divides. This is a book that helps us to create alliances that are not anchored solely in racial differences. Instead, it moves its audience to question what this difference entails, how this difference reconfigures our sense of belonging, and what this means for, and how it is inflected by, a more-than-human history and historiography under the pressing realities of climate change."- Cindy Kaiying Lin (Public Books) “Vaughn has undertaken considerable work, and her book is a milestone, a contribution to environmental anthropology conversant with Black ecologies and geographies, heralding a wave of ethnography grappling with ecological change, lived realities of climate adaptation, and more-than-human relationships.” - Jonna M. Yarrington (Transforming Anthropology) “Vaughn provides a vital contribution to our understanding of the impact of climate change on the infrastructures that underpin collective life.” - Andrew Lakoff (American Anthropologist) “Sarah Vaughn’s Engineering Vulnerability is a vital contribution to anthropological conversations about how climate transformation is contouring everyday and infrastructural life-particularly in postcolonial places.” - Stefan Helmreich (Current Anthropology) “The book’s scope is not restricted to Guyana, Caribbean scholarship, or anthropology. . . . Engineering Vulnerability is a breath of creativity for the questions it makes and the paths it follows.” - Marcelo Moura Mello (New West Indian Guide) “This excellent book will be of significant interest to those invested in climate adaptation . . . It is immensely rich, and readers will undoubtedly find themselves-as I did-taking away fascinating learnings page after page.” - Sameer H. Shah (Progress in Development Studies) “A fascinating book that will be of interest to multiple fields of research across environmental politics. Vaughn’s fieldwork and archival research into water management and climate adaptation in Guyana draw a long and complex history of a low-lying coastal settlement. Nothing about this history is simple, but she manages it all deftly.” - Charlotte Kate Weatherill (Global Environmental Politics)