Moving Roadblocks: The material and temporal relationships between road infrastructure and gopher tortoises in Florida

Keywords: Infrastructure, more-than-human, political ecology, movement
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Material relations to road infrastructure exist, making it imperative to acknowledge how the construction, maintenance, and embedded practices using roads regulate how we view space and movement, and experience everyday life. However, more-than-human beings are often dismissed in discussions around relationships to road infrastructure—regarded merely as roadblocks. The conflict between more-than-human lives and infrastructure is particularly prevalent in Florida, where road projects are constantly expanding to meet the needs of a growing population while simultaneously fragmenting habitat and displacing wildlife. This paper examines how road infrastructure processes shape and are shaped by more-than-human movements and their material and temporal relationships to the environment, using a case study of gopher tortoise relocation in Central Florida. Gopher tortoises have their own material and temporal relationships to road infrastructure projects, shown in the way these more-than-human beings encounter the road through movements, whether that is crossing of the road, dying on the road, or being relocated from the road. This paper argues, despite the dynamic ways roads influence tortoise life and movement, more-than-human beings also influence the governance and processes of road infrastructure construction and maintenance through these encounters. This suggests the material relationships and lived experiences of infrastructure go beyond the human subject posits us to consider what the constant expansion of road projects means for more-than-human life and the governance of both road construction and conservation.