To aid research on 'Engineering Levees: Reconstructing Water Management in New Orleans,'

This ethnographic study explores how levees and their roles in flood events -- and flood protection or risk reduction -- are continuously redefined and (re)constructed by human and nonhuman actors as well as how the levee reconstruction project is shaped by, and shaping, competing conceptions of the relationship between people, technology, and the environment in New Orleans. Building on an ANT/STS framework, this study focuses on conflict around levees and draws on a range of historical and ethnographic sources in order to trace associations mediated by levees. This research engages with questions about the active roles of technologies in engineered landscapes and extends the application of ANT within anthropology. This research may also contribute to public policy, especially as global warming and coastal restoration are issues directly shaped by engineering and scientific paradigms constructed around notions of the roles of people, industry, and technologies in relationship to 'nature.'