Send message to Authors

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how infrastructure involving Chinese state capital is built, maintained, and lived in Kenya. Drawing on ethnography, it shows how concrete, laboring bodies, and disciplinary practices materialize development and reproduce gendered and racialized inequalities in everyday life.

Paper long abstract

Based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in Kenya, this paper examines how infrastructure involving Chinese state capital is built, maintained, and “lived” in everyday practice against the backdrop of declining aid regimes and the weakening of multilateralism. Starting from the materiality of infrastructure and the corporeality of labor, the paper analyzes how development is concretized through concrete, machines, working hours, and disciplinary regimes.

In the operation of infrastructure projects, Chinese companies often invoke narratives of “cultural difference,” “hardship,” and “efficiency” to explain and legitimize high-intensity labor, gendered divisions of work, and racialized forms of discipline. Through an ethnographic analysis of work ethics, efficiency-oriented rationalities, and culturalized explanations, the paper shows how these narratives, in specific labor settings, transform structural inequalities into seemingly natural or cultural differences.

Drawing on the experiences of Kenyan workers, interpreters, and grassroots managers, the paper demonstrates that infrastructure does not exist merely as a symbol of connection and development. Rather, it actively shapes imaginaries of future development, China, and colonial histories, while being sustained through continuous bodily labor, emotional exhaustion, and social negotiation. The paper argues that attending to the materiality of infrastructure and the labor practices on which it depends allows for a deeper understanding of how development is endured, contested, and differentially experienced along the lines of gender, class, and race in everyday life.