Julia Leigh Radomski

JULIA RADOMSKI, then a graduate student at American University, Washington, DC, was awarded a grant in April 2021 to aid research on “Development Reassembled: An Ethnography of China’s Role in Latin American Infrastructure,” supervised by Dr. Malini Ranganathan. There is a new development leader in Latin America. What does China’s role in Latin America tell us about how the ‘project’ of development is being recast in the 21st century? Ecuador, despite being a small country, has been one of the primary recipients of Chinese development finance in Latin America. It has also been the site of substantial engagement, contestation, and resistance surrounding Chinese projects, particularly relating to large infrastructure. The Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric dam (CCS), the focus of this project, has sparked debates among grassroots activists and policy makers alike relating to its implications for Ecuadorian development. How do differentially positioned and multiply scaled actors engaged with Coca Codo Sinclair conceive of their relationship to China as a development actor? How do these relationships and understandings (re)assemble contemporary meanings of development? The research draws on the anthropology of development and science and technology studies to explore how CCS constitutes both a new and old development assemblage.