After years of working with indigenous peoples in the Amazon, drawing on ethnographic approaches, I refocused my research on urban technologies. I came to be fascinated by the political implications of transformations in urban infrastructures (e.g. water networks, waste collection or transport systems). As it became clear to me that technology is a powerful political force shaping the social dimensions of cities, I grew interested in the politics embedded (and often hidden) in both technological change and its materiality. Technology for me was not a passive agent, but one with an agency of its own. Its material configuration plays a fundamental role in establishing and maintaining social relations (i.e. it is relational) – this is precisely what is at stake in its political power.