Geopolitical Infrastructures as Ethnographic Objects: The Case of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline

Keywords: geopolitics, energy, infrastructure, Europe
Session Type: Virtual Paper
Day: Sunday
Session Start / End Time: 4/11/2021 09:35 AM (Pacific Time (US & Canada)) - 4/11/2021 10:50 AM (Pacific Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 30

Abstract

Working in the midst of a ravaging global pandemic, the construction of the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) -- a 546-mile-long pipeline which is to bring Caspian Basin natural gas from the Greek-Turkish border to Europe by the end of 2020 -- was recently completed across Greece, Albania and Italy. TAP is one of three that collectively make up the gas transit regime and cross-border logistical infrastructure known as the Southern Gas Corridor, aiming to ease Europe’s heavy dependence on the Russian gas. Taking TAP as a quintessentially geopolitical infrastructure, this paper examines some of the burgeoning political and geographic collective imaginaries this pipeline and its broader transit regime are to contribute in that part of the world. In particular, it investigates the EU’s “energy union” and “security union” and discusses where TAP may fit in these emergent politics of energy and their corresponding geographies from the perspective of EU policymakers and experts. The paper further probes geopolitical infrastructures from a methodological vantage point and discusses their ethnographic potential.