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Description:

Toward a Genealogy of Global Infrastructure: Histories, Temporalities, Ruptures


Over the past few years, there has been a growing attention to global infrastructure and its multiple manifestations across global space (Graham and McFarlane, 2015; Dodson 2017; Addie, Glass, and Nelles 2020). Being configured both in the form of ports, railways, roads, airports, pipelines, energy transmission systems, dams, etc. and in the less visible expression of planetary-scale computation systems (Halpern 2021), global infrastructure plays a crucial role in sustaining and reinforcing the hegemonic geographies of the global economy (Easterling 2014; Wiig and Silver 2019; Khalili 2020), not least contributing to distinct geopolitical, geosocial and geocultural imaginations (Larkin 2013; Anand, Gupta, and Appel 2018; Sintusingha and Wu 2021, Winter 2020). However, while there are lively debates about the current deployment and effects of global infrastructure, and how its operations are taking shape as a specific development strategy (Flint and Zhu 2019; Schindler and Kanai 2021) marked by severe social and environmental costs (Hetherington 2019; Apostolopoulou 2021), less attention has been paid to the multifaceted, overlapping, and often conflicting social, political, economic, and cultural histories from which such infrastructure projects have unfolded.

This panel is specifically concerned with bringing the study of global infrastructure into a genealogical perspective, thus aiming to start an interdisciplinary dialogue about its extended histories, temporalities, and ruptures. What kinds of socio-political projects, imaginations, and desires have triggered the manifold articulations of global infrastructure? What are the social, economic, and geographical histories underlying its frequently silent materiality? In what ways has global infrastructure offered and continues to offer novel and often radical temporal articulations that intersect the incessant remaking of capitalist spaces? What kind of tensions, resistance, and disruptions has global infrastructure faced before, during and after its deployment?


The discussion welcomes contributions concerning themes such as, but not limited to:

- Comparative histories of global infrastructure

- Ideas, imaginaries, and desires of infrastructure projects

- State/nation building and global infrastructure

- On-the-ground stories and analyses of global infrastructure

- Infrastructure transformations, suspensions, abandonments, and failures

- Techno-politics, ideologies, and systems of knowledge

- Colonial and postcolonial making and un-making of global infrastructure

- Temporalities of goods, information, and people

- Resistances, sabotages, and disruptions of global infrastructure

- Counter-narratives and counter-maps of global infrastructure

- Methodological challenges and opportunities in Global History


If you are interested in participating in this session or receiving further information please contact Simone Vegliò at simone.veglio@mau.se


Cited bibliography

Addie, J. P. D., Glass, M. R., and Nelles, J. (2020). Regionalizing the infrastructure turn: A research agenda. Regional Studies, Regional Science, 7(1), 10-26.
Anand, N., Gupta, A., and Appel, H. (Eds.). (2018). The Promise of Infrastructure. Durham: Duke University Press.
Apostolopoulou, E. (2021). Tracing the links between infrastructure‐led development, urban transformation, and inequality in China’s belt and road initiative. Antipode, 53(3), 831-858.
Dodson, J. (2017). The global infrastructure turn and urban practice. Urban Policy and Research, 35(1), 87-92.
Easterling, K. (2014). Extrastatecraft: The power of infrastructure space. London: Verso.
Flint, C., and Zhu, C. (2019). The geopolitics of connectivity, cooperation, and hegemonic competition: The Belt and Road Initiative. Geoforum, 99, 95-101.
Graham, S., and McFarlane, C. (Eds.). (2015). Infrastructural lives: Urban infrastructure in context. New York: Routledge.
Halpern, O. (2021). Planetary Intelligence. In: J. Roberge and M. Castelle (Eds.), The Cultural Life of Machine Learning (pp.227-256). Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hetherington, K. (Ed.) (2019). Infrastructure, environment, and life in the Anthropocene. Durham: Duke University Press.
Khalili, L. (2020). Sinews of War and Trade: Shipping and Capitalism in the Arabian Peninsula. London: Verso.
Larkin, B. (2013). The politics and poetics of infrastructure. Annual Review of Anthropology 42, 327–343.
Schindler, S., and Kanai, J. M. (2021). Getting the territory right: Infrastructure-led development and the re-emergence of spatial planning strategies. Regional Studies, 55(1), 40-51.
Sintusingha, S., and Wu, H. (2021). Re-imagining the Silk Road for the 21st century. In S. Sintusingha, H. Wu, W. Lin, S.S. Han, B. Qin (Eds.), International Perspectives on the Belt and Road Initiative (pp. 3-22). London: Routledge.
Wiig, A., and Silver, J. (2019). Turbulent presents, precarious futures: Urbanization and the deployment of global infrastructures. Regional Studies, 53(6), 912-923.
Winter, T. (2020). Silk road diplomacy: Geopolitics and histories of connectivity. International Journal of Cultural Policy, 26(7), 898-912.

Non-Presenting Participants