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- Convenors:
-
Jessica Hope
(University of St Andrews)
Murat Arsel (International Institute of Social Studies - Erasmus University Rotterdam)
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- Formats:
- Papers
- Stream:
- Infrastructure and energy
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 29 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
In this session, we discuss papers that examine what the global turn to infrastructure means, both empirically and theoretically, for analysing the environmental consequences of infrastructure-led development.
Long Abstract:
As climate change accelerates to become the defining development issue of the twenty first century, there is simultaneously a global turn to infrastructure (Dodson 2017) that promotes infrastructure-led development as necessary for ensuring growth-led sustainable development. Plans for new infrastructure in the Amazon, for example, include new highways, waterways, railways, ports, dams, and power stations (Bebbington et al 2020). Within social science, an infrastructural turn has brought changes to contemporary conceptualisations of infrastructure that go beyond physical materiality to examine infrastructures as a manifestation of social and technological processes (Lemanski 2019:3; Larkin 2013; Von Schnitzler 2008), revealing how infrastructure is implicated in citizenship (Lemanski 2020), post-colonial politics (Cowen 2019; Enns & Bersaglio 2020), authoritarian developmentalism (Arsel et al. forthcoming), and political ecology (Anand 2017; Bebbington 2020; Hope forthcoming).
In this session, we discuss papers that examine what this turn to infrastructure means, both empirically and theoretically, for understanding and analysing the environmental consequences of infrastructure-led development.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 29 June, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
I extend the analytical framework of infrastructural citizenship with political ecology to argue that an extended framework of ‘infrastructural ecological citizenship’ better acknowledges the multiple, changing and contested ways that people and rural places co-exist and are co-constituted.
Paper long abstract:
In this paper, I extend the analytical framework of infrastructural citizenship with political ecology and reorientate analysis to rural geographies, extractive infrastructure and indigenous territorial movements. Drawing from recent fieldwork in Bolivia, I argue that an extended conceptual framework of ‘infrastructural ecological citizenship’ better acknowledges the multiple, changing and contested ways that people and rural places co-exist and how these relationships are being reworked as infrastructure and citizenship are co-constituted. I use this framework to analyse a conflict over road building in an indigenous territory and national park in lowland Bolivia – the Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park (Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure; TIPNIS), revealing how the road building project weakened the pre-existing political and material infrastructures that underpinned modes of indigenous territorial citizenship within Bolivia’s Plurinational State, as well as foregrounding how transnational extractive capital has shaped negotiations of territorial place-based citizenship in the TIPNIS. In doing so, I contribute to debates on infrastructural citizenship, resource extraction and sustainable development, revealing the ongoing potency of place-based claims on land and related claims for territorial citizenship.
Paper short abstract:
This paper analyzes the effect played by the transport infrastructure in the development of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, considering the dual role of navigable rivers (first- and second- nature geography) and the relationship existing between man-made and natural transport systems.
Paper long abstract:
This paper analyzes the effect played by the transport infrastructure in the development of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, considering the dual role of navigable rivers and the relationship existing between man-made and natural transport systems. Navigable rivers have a twofold `nature'. On the one hand, they are a pure geographical condition that shapes territories (first-nature geography) and might represent a barrier to economic activity. On the other, navigable rivers are a natural mean of transport and constitute a transport infrastructure that facilitates trade and economic development (second-nature geography). This twofold `nature' is still neglected and has not explicitly been considered in the literature. The spatial distribution of the transport network reveals that man-made and natural means of transport constitute an integrated system of complementary `goods': areas, where rivers are navigable, do not have railways or main roads. If both railways and roads, although in a dilapidated condition, positively affect contemporary economic development and poverty alleviation, the Congo River and the whole network of tributaries and small rivers fall short of the role they could have in the economic growth of the country. I also investigate how beneficial is the inter-modal river-rail-road transport system. The empirical analysis suggests that the waterway transport benefits from the existence of the man-made one, however, navigable rivers are still far from being a real opportunity for the country.
Paper short abstract:
Bridging scholarship in natural sciences and social movements, I examine existing dynamics between the epistemic claims of climatologists working in the Amazon basin, and the political claims of the social movement resisting the construction of a motorway through the TIPNIS in Bolivia.
Paper long abstract:
In Bolivia, with two thirds of the TIPNIS motorway built, and with the movement defending the territory severely weakened, this is an opportune moment to reflect critically on what might be done to reinvigorate resistance to this infrastructure project. In this paper, I examine existing dynamics between the epistemic claims of climatologists working in the Amazon basin, and the political claims of the social movement in defence of the TIPNIS. To do this, I first present and analyse the different framings of the TIPNIS controversy over the development of motorway infrastructure that have been mobilised by the movement in defence of the TIPNIS, the Morales government, and critical scholars. I characterise these multiple framings as instances of ‘mobilising through nature’: the construction and deployment of political claims based on discourses of ecology. I argue that, willingly or not, the framings that the Morales administration and academics have mobilised undermine the indigenous movement’s historical narrative, dwarf local agency, and foreclose broad societal solidarity. Thereafter, I bring together literature on the politics of solidarity in the defence of TIPNIS (Cusicanqui, 2015; Laing, 2015) and scholarship on hydrological cycles in the region (Arraut et al. 2012; Gonçalves, 2018) to propose an alternative, socio-hydrological framing of the controversy. Here, the water cycles linking socionatural communities of lowland forests and highland valleys serve as a lens through which to reformulate the TIPNIS controversy in a way that could open up new avenues of solidarity and resistance for the lowland indigenous movement.
Paper short abstract:
This paper emphasises desire in assemblage theory to explore how climate justice is negotiated in the transition to renewable energy in South Africa. It elaborates a situated, non-universalist justice theorisation based on incompatible justice claims by actors pursuing renewable infrastructure.
Paper long abstract:
This paper advances a situated study of climate justice as it is contested via renewable energy transitions in South Africa. Assemblage theory is increasingly used to analyse climate change policy. Desire is central to the process of assemblage, as conceived by Deleuze and Guattari (1988), who argue that it animates the power and agency of people and things. Desire is often unaccounted for in human geographers’ application of assemblage theory which leads to descriptive ‘systems of things’ (Buchanan, 2020). Desire is analytically useful for understanding justice claims as it can reveal incompatibilities between seemingly aligned positions. Two overlapping policy assemblages are analysed: Green Climate Fund (GCF) project development and the national Just Transition Pathway. Both target the roll-out of renewable energy infrastructure. Data was collected between 2018-2020, consisting of interviews, participant observation in events related to each and key documents. The paper seeks to demonstrate the productive effect of desire in these assemblages. Desire for environmental and human health; reliable and affordable electricity; the propagation of an African green banking model; and the reproduction of the GCF. These contribute to infrastructural citizenship (Lemanski, 2020): a shared expression of that desire, albeit one in conflict. Actors are motivated by in-justices or by actions perceived as self-evidently just: subtly different positions, but the limits of these desires and the incompatibility between these positions elaborate tensions in climate justice. The spatial dimension of this, as desires territorialise in a national context, should be central in human geography’s application of assemblage theory.