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The Bamboo Bridge: Infrastructuring Community
Topics: Economic Geography
, Human-Environment Geography
, Socialist and Critical Geographies
Keywords: bridge, Cambodia, community economy, ecological resilience, film Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract Day: Tuesday Session Start / End Time: 3/1/2022 11:20 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 3/1/2022 12:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) Room: Virtual 35
Authors:
Katherine Gibson, Western Sydney University
Juan Francisco Salazar, Western Sydney University
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Abstract
The Bamboo Bridge across the Mekong River in Cambodia was an ephemeral infrastructure that lived with the flood and drew on a diverse array of economic and ecological practices of interdependence. Spanning 1.5 kms between Koh Paen Island and Kampung Chan, for decades this bridge was built every year as the river waters fell, and then dismantled and stored as the flood waters rose. In 2017 we filmed the last year of its life while a concrete bridge was constructed down river as part of China’s Belt and Road initiative. In this presentation we use clips from our film to draw attention to the more-than-human communities that were nourished and maintained by this social-ecological-technological infrastructure. With reference to the work of J.K. Gibson-Graham we present the bridge as an important site of caring and commoning where habitats converge. Drawing on the thoughts of Karen Barad we speculate on the possibilities for worldly reconfigurings presented by this vegetative infrastructure that we witnessed singing and moaning, bending and giving, as 4 wheel-drive vehicles travelled its length and fishers and waters flowed through its fibres.
