Anthropology on Air
Anthropology on Air is a podcast brought to you by the Social Anthropology department at the University of Bergen in Norway. Each season, we bring you conversations with inspiring thinkers from the anthropology world and beyond. The music in the podcast is made by Victor Lange, and the episodes are produced by Sadie Hale and Sidsel Marie Henriksen. You can follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anthropologyonair. Or visit www.uib.no/antro, where you can find more information on the ongoing work and upcoming events at the department.
Anthropology on Air
#13 Nuclear waste management & the anthropology of infrastructures w/Penny Harvey
In this episode of Anthropology on Air, we speak with Penny Harvey, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester in the UK. Penny is a Fellow of the British Academy, of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and the Academia Europaea.
Penny is a highly influential thinker on the topic of infrastructures. She is well known for her 2015 book about highway-building in South America, Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise (Cornell UP), which she co-wrote with Hannah Knox. The book addresses the deceptively simple question of how roads matter to people – an interest in the social life of infrastructure projects that still broadly animates Penny’s work today.
Penny’s long-term ethnographic research in Peru originally looked at Spanish/Quechua bilingualism, language, and power. It grew to include the study of civic infrastructure projects including road construction, sanitation, and waste management systems.
We talk about Penny’s current ethnographic study of nuclear decommissioning infrastructures in the UK, which includes her spending time at nuclear sites like Sellafield, which you will hear about in this conversation. She is involved in many projects relating to nuclear waste management, having co-founded the Beam network for social research on nuclear topics within the Dalton Nuclear Institute at the University of Manchester. She also serves as the Deputy Chair of the UK Government Committee on Radioactive Waste Management.
We hope you enjoy the conversation.
Penny Harvey - The Beam nuclear and social research network (manchester.ac.uk)