Flows of Violence Water, Infrastructures, and the State in Buenaventura, Colombia

"Flows of Violence provides a fascinating exploration of water infrastructure in the Colombian port city of Buenaventura and the violence that the city's residents face as result of the state's inadequate provision of water. Through careful ethnographic research, the author shows how the city's residents have navigated this situation through the production of their own infrastructure, expertise, and activism. The result is a book that will be of interest to scholars and students in a wide range of fields, such as science and technology studies, anthropology, and urban studies." - Maximilian Viatori, author of The Unequal Ocean: Living with Environmental Change along the Peruvian Coast

"In this theoretically grounded and ethnographically rich monograph, FernÁndez gives the reader a front-row view of the logics of infrastructural violence and the violence of everyday life that Afro-Colombians in the port city of Buenaventura experience because of systemic racism and state abandonment. Through firsthand accounts and gripping stories of gun violence from the field, underlaid with theoretical concepts, FernÁndez provides the reader with a vivid picture of the precarity that Afro-Colombians in Buenaventura experience in their search for water security. Ultimately, FernÁndez argues, and convincingly demonstrates, why infrastructural violence as it relates to water supply is mediated by gang violence, racism, and state neglect, making the everyday lives of Afro-Colombians in Buenaventura precarious and full of danger." - Vinay Kamat, author of In a Wounded Land: Conservation, Extraction, and Human Well-Being in Coastal Tanzania