Page McClean has won a Fulbright award to pursue her research in Chile. She will be spending 2019 in Chilean Patagonia researching the discourses, practices, and experiences of conectividad — the Chilean government's word for infrastructural development in the region. My research begins at the end of the Carretera Austral, a national highway that has been under construction for over 40 years. I will study both how this connective logic is understood and put into practice by state employees placed in "hardship posts" in the region, and how Patagonians interpret, experience, and respond to these developments through their regional and historical identities.
