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.

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