Roadsides

Foodways: An Introduction (Roadsides Journal Article)

We are happy to announce that gradually all our articles will be available in html on our website, starting with our latest issue on food: www.roadsides.net/articles/8888

Inditian Latifa demonstrates how stories of lost marsh rice in Indonesia reveal how crops, floods, and memory expand the meaning of hydraulic infrastructure. Read it here: www.roadsides.net/articles/8250

Carlotta Molfese explores the relationship between infrastructures and autonomy in agroecological food production by attending to mulch and its more-than-human (de)composition. Read it here: www.roadsides.net/articles/8176

In their contribution to our latest issue, @drvanessalamb.bsky.social and @zalifung.bsky.social show how food preparation by Karen women for anti-dam gatherings is a form of solidarity infrastructure in the Salween River Basin at the Thai–Myanmar border. www.roadsides.net/articles/8234

Joanna Radin and Mark Stern consider the affective and material ways that community cookbooks once helped weave kin-relations and what has taken their place amidst yearning for collective cathecting today. Read it in our latest issue "Foodways:" www.roadsides.net/articles/8249

@tutam.bsky.social examines plantation infrastructures designed to produce cheap food and fuel, and how they intersect with locally established food infrastructures in Papua New Guinea. In our latest issue on Foodways. Read his photo essay here: www.roadsides.net/articles/8063

In their contribution to our new issue on Foodways, @kalzangmarpo.bsky.social & @mirzalibra10.bsky.social examine questions of highland mobility, infrastructures, state-making and bordering connected to ‘Chhurpi’, the Himalayan cheese. www.roadsides.net/articles/8240

@china-geographies.bsky.social examines the infrastructures that move pesticides from China to Australia and what they tell us about the global production of food. www.roadsides.net/articles/8236

Pesticide Infrastructures: From China to Australia (Roadsides Journal Article)

Really pleased to be part of the new issue of @roadsides.bsky.social

Short piece on the infrastructures that move pesticides from China to Australia

www.roadsides.net/articles/8236

In his contribution to "Foodways," André Thiemann studies the infrastructures of value that shape the world market of raspberries by focusing on projects in Arilje, Serbia, to valorize its “taste of place”. www.roadsides.net/articles/8580

New paper with @drvanessalamb.bsky.social in @roadsides.bsky.social

We show how food preparation, primarily undertaken by older Karen women, is key to contesting long-proposed hydropower dams & water diversions in the Salween River Basin

Thanks editors @mattrest.bsky.social & Dolly Kikon

The new @roadsides.bsky.social collection is out, on Foodways! An excellent issue, edited by the fab @dollykikon.bsky.social and @mattrest.bsky.social

www.roadsides.net/collections/...

Fish at the market

Meghal Perera explores how vendors reject and repurpose cold chain infrastructure in a fish market in Colombo, to suit their own understandings of freshness. www.roadsides.net/articles/8248

Collection No. 14 Roadsides' Collection No. 14

The new issue of @roadsides.bsky.social is out! Titled "Foodways", the articles of the issue discuss the various intersections of #infrastructure and food. Edited by @mattrest.bsky.social & Dolly Kikon.

Roadsides is an excellent, non-profit and community managed #OpenAcces journal!

#anthropology

In her photo essay, @fizza7.bsky.social recounts how the Karakoram Highway traded food sovereignty for dependency, how the road built to connect them dismantled the world for the people of Ishkoman.

www.roadsides.net/articles/8243

“What is this - a refinery?” “Yes, for milk”

In their Introduction to our new issue titled „Foodways“ @mattrest.bsky.social and Dolly Kikon ask: „how do foodways and their socio-cultural-cosmological scaffoldings and infrastructure condition each other?“

www.roadsides.net/articles/8888

You can find our current issue on food and infrastructure at our brand new website roadsides.net

Fizza Batool recounts how the Karakoram Highway traded food sovereignty for dependency and how the road built to connect the people of Ishkoman instead dismantled the world for them.

Working on fresh approaches to infrastructures? If you can imagine editing a special issue with us, send us a proposal!

Deadline for proposals: 15 November 2025

Send proposals to our editors-in-chief:

Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi
agnieszka.joniak@unifr.ch

Tina Harris
C.H.Harris@uva.nl

Labour of Love: An Open Access Manifesto for Freedom, Integrity, and Creativity in the Humanities and Interpretive Social Sciences With a number of recommendations toward the commonification of open access

Roadsides is Open Access, check our manifesto:

“the humanities and social sciences are too often disengaged from the public ... we want to reclaim the project of Open Access and key it to a different register of shared creativity and responsibility.”
commonplace.knowledgefutures.org/pub/y0xy565k...

Journal cover image depicting men using axes to cut blocks of natural ice on the side of a mountain

CFP for the new @roadsides.bsky.social issue, CRYOSPHERE. roadsides.net/call-for-pap... "Snow and ice have long served as vital resources for human and non-human inhabitants of this planet. Today the world is experiencing immense changes to the cryosphere."

Microlandscape on the Haber–Bosch catalyst surface, a high-pressure reactor, World War I battlefield, algal bloom in Baltic Sea, war news on an ammonia pipeline in Ukraine. Collage: Author, 2024.

In "Ammonia Synthesis: Entering a Ubiquitous Chemical Technosphere" Benjamin Steininger rethinks ammonia synthesis and follows its specific associated toxicities, putting particular emphasis on the ‘openness’ of industrial infrastructure. roadsides.net/collection-n...

Iron sulfides like pyrite have been identified as the main culprits in Donegal’s defective concrete. Due to their presence, many homes are crumbling. Photo: Angela Tourish, 2024

In her article "Toxic Recurrences" Kaitlyn Rabach demonstrates that crumbling homes and toxic mould go unacknowledged in County Donegal, Ireland, as residents fear speaking out will devalue their property. roadsides.net/collection-n...

Pellets being tracked o" the field at Azusa High School. These pellets can travel across campus and even to students’ homes. Photo: Fred Ariel Hernandez, 2023

In "Repairing Toxic: Deferred Maintenance in Schools" Margaret Tebbe and Fred Ariel Hernandez suggest how late-industrial ethnography can make visible some of the toxic hazards in Los Angeles school buildings. roadsides.net/collection-n...

SIlica dust. Photo: Tuaindeed / Getty Images.

In "Silica Trails: Turned Soils, Dusty Lungs" Juliana Ramos Boldrin illustrates how silica exposure can damage health, but mitigating the harm could jeopardise Brazil’s dominance in silica export. roadsides.net/collection-n...

Subway worker wearing a protective mask, Buenos Aires. Photo: Jorge Afarian, 2019.

In "Toxic Struggles: Asbestos in Argentina’s Subway" Jorge Afarian reveals how Buenos Aires metro workers face illegal asbestos exposure and uncovers a troubling hierarchy between acceptable and unacceptable health risks. roadsides.net/collection-n...

An abandoned plant in Mailuu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan. Photo: Nikolaos Olma, 2021.

Gulzat Baialieva considers how 80 tons of abandoned toxic waste in Kyrgyzstan trigger discussions on the toxic aftermath of neoliberal reforms and state neglect in her article "Seeking Environmental Justice Amid Post-Industrial Ruins."
roadsides.net/collection-n...

Wakar (‘minewatcher’) tent and excavator in the dirt road. Photo: Fahmi Fahroji, 2023.

In his article "Wounded Landscape: Ambivalence and Toxic Extractivism in Indonesia" Fahmi R. Fahroji explores how a coal company’s seizure of rubber plantations in Indonesia has pushed farmers into toxic, low-paying jobs in the mining industry.
roadsides.net/collection-n...

One end of the portage trails, and the site of the remediation project. Photo: Laura Goyhenex, May 2024.

In "Remediating Trails: Addressing Toxicities from Pitchblende Transportation" Laura Goyhenex links historical uranium ore spills on Indigenous land in Canada’s Northwest Territories to both toxic contamination and colonial power relations.
roadsides.net/collection-n...

In his article "Breaking Points: Mediated Contaminations, Infrastructural Toxicity" Andrea Bordoli examines mining-linked water contamination in Indigenous lands in Canada and proposes infrastructural toxicity as a lens to address settler-colonial violence.
roadsides.net/collection-n...