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Alderman, J., Whittaker, C. A Bridge that Divides: Hostile Infrastructures. Coloniality and Watchfulness in San Diego, California. Sociologus, 71(2), 153-174. https://doi.org/10.3790/soc.71.2.153
Alderman, Jonathan and Whittaker, Catherine "A Bridge that Divides: Hostile Infrastructures. Coloniality and Watchfulness in San Diego, California" Sociologus 71.2, 2022, 153-174. https://doi.org/10.3790/soc.71.2.153
Alderman, Jonathan/Whittaker, Catherine (2022): A Bridge that Divides: Hostile Infrastructures. Coloniality and Watchfulness in San Diego, California, in: Sociologus, vol. 71, iss. 2, 153-174, [online] https://doi.org/10.3790/soc.71.2.153
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A Bridge that Divides: Hostile Infrastructures. Coloniality and Watchfulness in San Diego, California

Alderman, Jonathan | Whittaker, Catherine

Sociologus, Vol. 71 (2021), Iss. 2 : pp. 153–174

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Duncker & Humblot
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3790/soc.71.2.153
Language
Multiple languages
Pages
22
Keywords

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Author Details

Jonathan Alderman, Collaborative Research Center 1369 ‘Cultures of Vigilance’, LMU Munich, Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 Munich.

Catherine Whittaker, Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Goethe University Frankfurt, 60629 Frankfurt/Main.

References

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  2. Alderman, J. 2022. Watchfulness in the US-Mexican Borderland. SFB 1369 Vigilanzkulturen, Mitteilungen 01/2022, pp. 11–19. Munich: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität.  Google Scholar
  3. Alderman, J. & Goodwin, G. 2022. Introduction: Infrastructure as Relational and Experimental Process. In J. Alderman & G. Goodwin (eds.), The Social and Political Life of Latin American Infrastructures, pp. 1–26. London: University of London Press.  Google Scholar
  4. Amit, V. 2020. Rethinking Anthropological Perspectives on Community: Watchful Indifference and Joint Commitment. In B. Jansen (ed.) Rethinking Community through Transdisciplinary Research, pp. 49–67. London: Palgrave Macmillan.  Google Scholar
  5. Anguiano, M. n.d. The Battle of Chicano Park: A Brief History of the Takeover. Chicano Park Steering Committee. Available at: <https://chicano-park.com/cpscbattleof.html> (Accessed: 20 Jun. 2022).  Google Scholar
  6. Anzaldúa, G. 2002. (Un)Natural Bridges, (Un)Safe Spaces. In G. Anzaldúa and A. Keating (eds.), This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, pp. 1–5. New York, London: Routledge.  Google Scholar
  7. Anzaldúa, G. 2012 [1987]. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.  Google Scholar
  8. Appadurai, A. 1997. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.  Google Scholar
  9. Appel, H., Anand, N. & Gupta, A. 2018. Introduction: Temporality, Politics, and the Promise of Infrastructure. In N. Anand, A. Gupta & H. Appel, (eds.), The Promise of Infrastructure, pp. 1–38. Durham & London: Duke University Press.  Google Scholar
  10. Avila, E. 2014. The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.  Google Scholar
  11. Barenboim, D. 2016. The Specter of Surveillance: Navigating ‘Illegality’ and Indigeneity among Maya Migrants in the San Francisco Bay Area. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 39 (1), pp. 79–94.  Google Scholar
  12. Barrio Bridge. 2020. The Chicano Park Steering Committee Objects to Sepolio Early Release. Available at: <https://www.facebook.com/298152410237632/photos/a.298647426854797/3699360696783436> (Accessed: 20 Jun. 2022)  Google Scholar
  13. Barth, F. 1969. Introduction. In F. Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference, pp. 9–57. Bergen: Universitetsforlaget.  Google Scholar
  14. Boyer, D. 2017. Revolutionary Infrastructure. In P. Harvey, C. Bruun Jensen and A. Morita (eds.) Infrastructures and Social Complexity: A Companion, pp. 174–186. London & New York: Routledge.  Google Scholar
  15. Chavez, L. 2013. The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation. Redwood City: Stanford University Press.  Google Scholar
  16. Chu, J. Y. 2014. When Infrastructures Attack: The Workings of Disrepair in China. American Ethnologist, 41(2), pp. 351–367.  Google Scholar
  17. Cohen, A. P. 1996. Personal Nationalism: A Scottish View of Some Rites, Rights, and Wrongs. American Ethnologist, 23 (4), pp. 802–815.  Google Scholar
  18. Delgado, K. 1998. A Turning Point: The Conception and Realization of Chicano Park. The Journal Journal of San Diego History, 44(1), pp. 48–61.  Google Scholar
  19. Dürr, E. & Whittaker, C. 2021. “Go back to your country!” Wachsamkeit, Wissen und Kolonalität im US-mexikanischen Grenzraum. Ila – Lateinamerika-Magazin, 449, pp. 4–6.  Google Scholar
  20. Frekko, S. E., Leinaweaver, J. B. & Marre, D. 2015. How (Not) to Talk about Adoption: On Communicative Vigilance in Spain. American Ethnologist, 42(4), 703–719.  Google Scholar
  21. Galaviz, M. G. 2012. Expressions of Membership and Belonging: Chicana/o Cultural Politics in Barrio Logan. M.A. thesis, California State University, San Bernardino.  Google Scholar
  22. Goldstein, D. M. 2012. Outlawed: Between Security and Rights in a Bolivian City. Durham & London: Duke University Press.  Google Scholar
  23. Gutiérrez, R. A. 2016. What’s in a Name? The History and Politics of Hispanic and Latino Panethnicities. In R. A. Gutiérrez and T. Almaguer (eds.), The New Latino Studies Reader, pp. 19–53. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.  Google Scholar
  24. Harvey, P. & Knox, H. 2015. Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.  Google Scholar
  25. Harvey, P., Bruun Jensen, C. & Morita, A. 2017. Introduction: Infrastructural Complications. In P. Harvey, C. B. Jensen, and A. Morita (eds.), Infrastructures and Social Complexity: A Companion, pp. 1–22. London: Routledge.  Google Scholar
  26. Hernández, R. D. 2018. Coloniality of the US/Mexico Border: Power, Violence and the Decolonial Imperative. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.  Google Scholar
  27. Hidalgo, J. M. 2016. Revelation in Aztlán Scriptures, Utopias, and the Chicano Movement. New York: Pelgrave MacMillan.  Google Scholar
  28. Howe, C. et al. 2016. Paradoxical Infrastructures: Ruins, Retrofit, and Risk. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 41(3), pp. 547–565.  Google Scholar
  29. Kirszbaum, T. 2019. Urban Renewal in the USA: A Neoliberal Policy? Métropolitiques. Available at: <https://metropolitics.org/Urban-Renewal-in-the-USA-A-Neoliberal-Policy.html> (Accessed: 22 Feb. 2022).  Google Scholar
  30. Kucher, K. & Figueroa, T. 2020. Driver Who Killed 4 in Chicano Park Crash Set for Early Prison Release; DA Calls the Move ‘Unconscionable’. The San Diego Union-Tribune, Nov. 4, 2020. Available at: <https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/story/2020-11-04/driver-who-killed-4-in-chicano-park-crash-set-for-early-prison-release-da-calls-the-move-unconscionable> (Accessed: 27 June 2021).  Google Scholar
  31. Larkin, B. 2013. The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42(1): pp. 327–343.  Google Scholar
  32. Latorre, G. 2008. Walls of Empowerment: Chicana/o Indigenist Murals of California. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  Google Scholar
  33. Lemanski, C. 2019. Infrastructural Citizenship: The Everyday Citizenships of Adapting And/Or Destroying Public Infrastructure in Cape Town, South Africa. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 45 (3), pp. 589–605.  Google Scholar
  34. May, T. 2010. Contemporary Political Movements and the Thought of Jacques Rancière: Equality in Action. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.  Google Scholar
  35. McCaughan, E. J. 2020. ‘We Didn’t Cross the Border, the Border Crossed Us’: Artists’ Images of the US-Mexico Border and Immigration. Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, 2 (1): pp. 6–31.  Google Scholar
  36. Moraga, C. L. & Anzaldúa, G. (eds.) 1983 [1981]. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.  Google Scholar
  37. Quijano, A. 2008. Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Social Classification. In M. Moraña, E. Dussel and C. A. Jáuregui (eds.), Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate, pp. 181–223. Durham & London: Duke University Press.  Google Scholar
  38. Rancière, J. 1992. Politics, Identification, and Subjectivization. October 61 (The Identity in Question), pp. 58–64.  Google Scholar
  39. Rancière, J. 2010. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. London: Continuum.  Google Scholar
  40. Rancière, J. 2014. Contemporary Art and the Politics of Aesthetics. In B. Hinderliter et al. (eds.), Communities of Sense: Rethinking Aesthetics and Politics, pp. 31–50. Durham & London: Duke University Press.  Google Scholar
  41. Reeves, M. 2017. Infrastructures of Hope: Anticipating ‘Independent Roads’ and Territorial Integrity in Southern Kyrgyzstan. Ethnos, 82 (4), pp. 711–737.  Google Scholar
  42. Rosen, M. D. & Fisher, J. 2001. Chicano Park and the Chicano Park Murals: Barrio Logan, City of San Diego, California. The Public Historian, 23 (4), pp. 91–111.  Google Scholar
  43. Rothstein, R. 2017. The Colour of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York & London: Liveright Publishing Corporation.  Google Scholar
  44. Simmel, G. [1909] 1994. Bridge and Door. Theory, Culture and Society, 11, pp. 5–10.  Google Scholar
  45. St John, R. 2011. Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border. Princeton: Princeton University Press.  Google Scholar
  46. Star, S. L. 1999. The Ethnography of Infrastructure. American Behavioral Scientist, 43 (3), pp. 377–391.  Google Scholar
  47. Talamantez, J. S. 2011. Chicano Park and the Chicano Park Murals: A National Register Nomination. Master Thesis, California State University, Sacramento.  Google Scholar
  48. Taylor, L. D. 2002. The Wild Frontier Moves South: U.S. Entrepreneurs and the Growth of Tijuana’s Vice Industry, 1908–1935. The Journal of San Diego History, 48 (3): 204–229.  Google Scholar
  49. Watts, B. 2004. Aztlán as a Palimpsest. From Chicano Nationalism toward Transnational Feminism in Anzaldúa’s Borderlands. Latino Studies, 2, pp. 304–321.  Google Scholar
  50. Whittaker, C., Dürr, E., Alderman, J. & Luiprecht, C. Forthcoming. Watchful Lives in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Berlin: De Gruyter.  Google Scholar
  51. Yeh, R. 2017. Passing: Two Publics in a Mexican Border City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  Google Scholar
  52. Aaronson, D., Hartley, D. & Mazumder, B. 2019. The Effects of the 130s HOLC ‘Redlining’ Maps. Working Paper. Federal Reserve of Chicago.  Google Scholar
  53. Alderman, J. 2022. Watchfulness in the US-Mexican Borderland. SFB 1369 Vigilanzkulturen, Mitteilungen 01/2022, pp. 11–19. Munich: Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität.  Google Scholar
  54. Alderman, J. & Goodwin, G. 2022. Introduction: Infrastructure as Relational and Experimental Process. In J. Alderman & G. Goodwin (eds.), The Social and Political Life of Latin American Infrastructures, pp. 1–26. London: University of London Press.  Google Scholar
  55. Amit, V. 2020. Rethinking Anthropological Perspectives on Community: Watchful Indifference and Joint Commitment. In B. Jansen (ed.) Rethinking Community through Transdisciplinary Research, pp. 49–67. London: Palgrave Macmillan.  Google Scholar
  56. Anguiano, M. n.d. The Battle of Chicano Park: A Brief History of the Takeover. Chicano Park Steering Committee. Available at: <https://chicano-park.com/cpscbattleof.html> (Accessed: 20 Jun. 2022).  Google Scholar
  57. Anzaldúa, G. 2002. (Un)Natural Bridges, (Un)Safe Spaces. In G. Anzaldúa and A. Keating (eds.), This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, pp. 1–5. New York, London: Routledge.  Google Scholar
  58. Anzaldúa, G. 2012 [1987]. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.  Google Scholar
  59. Appadurai, A. 1997. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.  Google Scholar
  60. Appel, H., Anand, N. & Gupta, A. 2018. Introduction: Temporality, Politics, and the Promise of Infrastructure. In N. Anand, A. Gupta & H. Appel, (eds.), The Promise of Infrastructure, pp. 1–38. Durham & London: Duke University Press.  Google Scholar
  61. Avila, E. 2014. The Folklore of the Freeway: Race and Revolt in the Modernist City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.  Google Scholar
  62. Barenboim, D. 2016. The Specter of Surveillance: Navigating ‘Illegality’ and Indigeneity among Maya Migrants in the San Francisco Bay Area. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 39 (1), pp. 79–94.  Google Scholar
  63. Barrio Bridge. 2020. The Chicano Park Steering Committee Objects to Sepolio Early Release. Available at: <https://www.facebook.com/298152410237632/photos/a.298647426854797/3699360696783436> (Accessed: 20 Jun. 2022)  Google Scholar
  64. Barth, F. 1969. Introduction. In F. Barth (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Culture Difference, pp. 9–57. Bergen: Universitetsforlaget.  Google Scholar
  65. Boyer, D. 2017. Revolutionary Infrastructure. In P. Harvey, C. Bruun Jensen and A. Morita (eds.) Infrastructures and Social Complexity: A Companion, pp. 174–186. London & New York: Routledge.  Google Scholar
  66. Chavez, L. 2013. The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation. Redwood City: Stanford University Press.  Google Scholar
  67. Chu, J. Y. 2014. When Infrastructures Attack: The Workings of Disrepair in China. American Ethnologist, 41(2), pp. 351–367.  Google Scholar
  68. Cohen, A. P. 1996. Personal Nationalism: A Scottish View of Some Rites, Rights, and Wrongs. American Ethnologist, 23 (4), pp. 802–815.  Google Scholar
  69. Delgado, K. 1998. A Turning Point: The Conception and Realization of Chicano Park. The Journal Journal of San Diego History, 44(1), pp. 48–61.  Google Scholar
  70. Dürr, E. & Whittaker, C. 2021. “Go back to your country!” Wachsamkeit, Wissen und Kolonalität im US-mexikanischen Grenzraum. Ila – Lateinamerika-Magazin, 449, pp. 4–6.  Google Scholar
  71. Frekko, S. E., Leinaweaver, J. B. & Marre, D. 2015. How (Not) to Talk about Adoption: On Communicative Vigilance in Spain. American Ethnologist, 42(4), 703–719.  Google Scholar
  72. Galaviz, M. G. 2012. Expressions of Membership and Belonging: Chicana/o Cultural Politics in Barrio Logan. M.A. thesis, California State University, San Bernardino.  Google Scholar
  73. Goldstein, D. M. 2012. Outlawed: Between Security and Rights in a Bolivian City. Durham & London: Duke University Press.  Google Scholar
  74. Gutiérrez, R. A. 2016. What’s in a Name? The History and Politics of Hispanic and Latino Panethnicities. In R. A. Gutiérrez and T. Almaguer (eds.), The New Latino Studies Reader, pp. 19–53. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.  Google Scholar
  75. Harvey, P. & Knox, H. 2015. Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.  Google Scholar
  76. Harvey, P., Bruun Jensen, C. & Morita, A. 2017. Introduction: Infrastructural Complications. In P. Harvey, C. B. Jensen, and A. Morita (eds.), Infrastructures and Social Complexity: A Companion, pp. 1–22. London: Routledge.  Google Scholar
  77. Hernández, R. D. 2018. Coloniality of the US/Mexico Border: Power, Violence and the Decolonial Imperative. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.  Google Scholar
  78. Hidalgo, J. M. 2016. Revelation in Aztlán Scriptures, Utopias, and the Chicano Movement. New York: Pelgrave MacMillan.  Google Scholar
  79. Howe, C. et al. 2016. Paradoxical Infrastructures: Ruins, Retrofit, and Risk. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 41(3), pp. 547–565.  Google Scholar
  80. Kirszbaum, T. 2019. Urban Renewal in the USA: A Neoliberal Policy? Métropolitiques. Available at: <https://metropolitics.org/Urban-Renewal-in-the-USA-A-Neoliberal-Policy.html> (Accessed: 22 Feb. 2022).  Google Scholar
  81. Kucher, K. & Figueroa, T. 2020. Driver Who Killed 4 in Chicano Park Crash Set for Early Prison Release; DA Calls the Move ‘Unconscionable’. The San Diego Union-Tribune, Nov. 4, 2020. Available at: <https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/story/2020-11-04/driver-who-killed-4-in-chicano-park-crash-set-for-early-prison-release-da-calls-the-move-unconscionable> (Accessed: 27 June 2021).  Google Scholar
  82. Larkin, B. 2013. The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42(1): pp. 327–343.  Google Scholar
  83. Latorre, G. 2008. Walls of Empowerment: Chicana/o Indigenist Murals of California. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  Google Scholar
  84. Lemanski, C. 2019. Infrastructural Citizenship: The Everyday Citizenships of Adapting And/Or Destroying Public Infrastructure in Cape Town, South Africa. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 45 (3), pp. 589–605.  Google Scholar
  85. May, T. 2010. Contemporary Political Movements and the Thought of Jacques Rancière: Equality in Action. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.  Google Scholar
  86. McCaughan, E. J. 2020. ‘We Didn’t Cross the Border, the Border Crossed Us’: Artists’ Images of the US-Mexico Border and Immigration. Latin American and Latinx Visual Culture, 2 (1): pp. 6–31.  Google Scholar
  87. Moraga, C. L. & Anzaldúa, G. (eds.) 1983 [1981]. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.  Google Scholar
  88. Quijano, A. 2008. Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Social Classification. In M. Moraña, E. Dussel and C. A. Jáuregui (eds.), Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate, pp. 181–223. Durham & London: Duke University Press.  Google Scholar
  89. Rancière, J. 1992. Politics, Identification, and Subjectivization. October 61 (The Identity in Question), pp. 58–64.  Google Scholar
  90. Rancière, J. 2010. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. London: Continuum.  Google Scholar
  91. Rancière, J. 2014. Contemporary Art and the Politics of Aesthetics. In B. Hinderliter et al. (eds.), Communities of Sense: Rethinking Aesthetics and Politics, pp. 31–50. Durham & London: Duke University Press.  Google Scholar
  92. Reeves, M. 2017. Infrastructures of Hope: Anticipating ‘Independent Roads’ and Territorial Integrity in Southern Kyrgyzstan. Ethnos, 82 (4), pp. 711–737.  Google Scholar
  93. Rosen, M. D. & Fisher, J. 2001. Chicano Park and the Chicano Park Murals: Barrio Logan, City of San Diego, California. The Public Historian, 23 (4), pp. 91–111.  Google Scholar
  94. Rothstein, R. 2017. The Colour of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. New York & London: Liveright Publishing Corporation.  Google Scholar
  95. Simmel, G. [1909] 1994. Bridge and Door. Theory, Culture and Society, 11, pp. 5–10.  Google Scholar
  96. St John, R. 2011. Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexico Border. Princeton: Princeton University Press.  Google Scholar
  97. Star, S. L. 1999. The Ethnography of Infrastructure. American Behavioral Scientist, 43 (3), pp. 377–391.  Google Scholar
  98. Talamantez, J. S. 2011. Chicano Park and the Chicano Park Murals: A National Register Nomination. Master Thesis, California State University, Sacramento.  Google Scholar
  99. Taylor, L. D. 2002. The Wild Frontier Moves South: U.S. Entrepreneurs and the Growth of Tijuana’s Vice Industry, 1908–1935. The Journal of San Diego History, 48 (3): 204–229.  Google Scholar
  100. Watts, B. 2004. Aztlán as a Palimpsest. From Chicano Nationalism toward Transnational Feminism in Anzaldúa’s Borderlands. Latino Studies, 2, pp. 304–321.  Google Scholar
  101. Whittaker, C., Dürr, E., Alderman, J. & Luiprecht, C. Forthcoming. Watchful Lives in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Berlin: De Gruyter.  Google Scholar
  102. Yeh, R. 2017. Passing: Two Publics in a Mexican Border City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.  Google Scholar

Abstract

Abstract

The construction of the Coronado Bridge, completed in 1969, over Barrio Logan in San Diego in the US-Mexico borderlands physically manifests relations of coloniality that ­those in the neighbourhood experience on a daily basis. Drawing on anthropological approaches and the philosophy of Jacques Rancière, this article examines the unintended consequences of infrastructure construction. We reveal how political subjectivity develops through actions contesting the inequality that the infrastructure represents by focusing on residents’ creation of a community park below the bridge. We argue that a shared watchfulness over the park by its local guardians is central to the formation of their subjectivity and that the aesthetics of the park challenge dominant notions of belonging and temporality within the United States.

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Jonathan Alderman / Catherine Whittaker: A Bridge that Divides: Hostile Infrastructures, Coloniality and Watchfulness in San Diego, California 153
Abstract 153
1. Introduction 153
2. The politics and aesthetics of infrastructure 157
3. Migration into San Diego and development of the neighbourhood of Barrio Logan 160
4. A bridge that connects and divides 162
5. Building Chicano Park and watching out over Aztlán 164
6. Conclusion 170
References 171

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