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- Convenors:
-
Danaé Leitenberg
(University of Basel)
Sabrina Stallone (University of Bern)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 28 July, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Proposing an understanding of growth as a concept bridging hope and transformation, this panel discusses unequal promises of progress via extractive development and their affective force in late-capitalist contexts. We ground these reflections around the so-called "promise of infrastructure".
Long Abstract:
With the emergence of the Anthropocene debate, notions of linear growth have been increasingly questioned. While a concomitance of crises prompted scholars and activists to rethink the faulty logics of capitalist growth, globally speaking, inequalities caused by extraction have deepened and expansion-oriented technologies have spread. Imaginaries of a brighter future achieved through accumulation too continue to exert their grip on many people and communities around the world, hoping for ideals of the good life inextricably linked with capitalism. Arguing for an understanding of growth as a concept at the conjunction of hope and transformation, we aim to discuss ethnographic examinations of promises of 'progress via extractive sprawl and development' and their affective force in late-capitalist contexts.
We propose to ground these reflections around the planning of infrastructural projects and what anthropological scholarship has recently called "the promise of infrastructure" (Anand, Appel and Gupta 2018), consisting of calls for a transformative future that "exceeds the present" (Gupta 2018: 63). Beyond the often proposed claim that infrastructural projects are aimed towards achieving a particular "common good", responding to preexisting "publics", we follow a social-constructivist approach and are interested in how such publics and affective collectivities are summoned, performed and contested, based on differential affordances structured by gender, race, class, ableness, citizenship, etc. In other words, what are the hopes and threats wrapped around the making or contestation of infrastructural growth in late capitalism? What are the uneven impacts of the growth imperative? How can they be ethnographically captured?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 28 July, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
This work is about the Chilean state's promise to adopt, as fast as possible, telecom infrastructures for development and nation-building. Networks like 5G feed the dreams of innovation, economic growth and connectivity. But this desired future is also the past. How can a promise last 200 years?
Paper long abstract:
The following work is about the Chilean state's promise to be the first in the region to adopt telecommunications infrastructures for development and nation-building. This reflection is part of a research on the implementation of 5G in the country, including the expansion of 4G and the dreams for 6G. Using an ethnographic perspective that highlights the mediatization of the infrastructure both inside and outside the screens, in addition to the human labour that supports the antennas, the primacy of an idea is observed: ‘we are the first, the leaders of the region’. The preliminary analyzes are comparative, between observations made on the process of installing and turning on the 5G network, and other processes of implementing telecommunications infrastructure.
The similarities between experiences are uncanny; and the history of the country that yearns for connectivity, economic growth and innovation becomes a characteristic of the present. 'We were the first, the leaders in the region' for 2G and 4G, also for the satellite network and the microwave network; and for radio, television and the telegraph. Ethnography allows us to see the weight of history that lives in each business and ministerial decision, in other words, it shows the vitality of an idea that is historicized and materialized under the electromagnetic spectrum. 200 years are condensed into data at the speed of light, because ’we will be the first, the leaders of the region’. What are the ethnographical challenges to collapse the past, the present and the futures of the promise?
Paper short abstract:
Based on my ethnographic field research, in my paper, I will unpack hopes, plans, and desires through narratives of different societal dimensions, including users of old and new roads, the expert community, and the media and public discourse related to Kyrgyzstan's Alternative North-South Road.
Paper long abstract:
Across Kyrgyzstan, like in other parts of the world, each road is a part of large infrastructure development agendas initiated by various international and national actors and of the local life-worlds. However, the infrastructure projects from the beginning of the idea and design to the construction phase have different perceptions, imaginations, and expectations on the part of the participants in infrastructure relations. Hence, scholars conceptualize roads as complex accumulations of social relations between humans, materials, capital, terrain, climate, discourses and the state (Harvey and Knox 2015; Joniak-Luthi, 2019; Harvey 2018).
In my paper, I will focus on the complex life of roads in Kyrgyzstan and how it affects the (dis)connectivity narratives. Based on my ethnographic field research, in my paper, I will focus on the Alternative North-South Road, a major road construction project which started in 2014 in Kyrgyzstan. This road carries different missions and promises: from strengthening the nation's unity to being part of larger international economic corridors linking the Central Asian region. In addition, it is expected to open up the potential of the country's inland areas by exploring untapped natural resources.
Usually, road projects are developed and implemented at the state level with the expert and donor community; and often, the outreach to local communities is at a superficial level. Therefore, I plan to unpack hopes, plans, and desires through narratives of different societal dimensions, including users of old and new roads, the expert community, and the media and public discourse related to Kyrgyzstan's Alternative North-South Road.
Paper short abstract:
The city of Baia Mare, Romania, is ostensibly an industrial hotspot for local and international companies alike. This development boom is paired, however, with underdevelopment, deprivation and discrimination by the capitalist system, the state, and local communities alike.
Paper long abstract:
Tens of thousands of labourers work in the factories in and around Baia Mare, a city that is newly industrialized after an initial industrialization under socialism. Most inner-city old industrial sites have been abandoned and brownfield projects are sprawling in the area around Baia Mare. Local and multinational companies push the state for infrastructure development: fully-serviced industrial parks, airport expansion, road-building and maintenance.
Most companies pay most workers the minimum wage of about 280 euro a month. Their objective is to achieve the lowest possible production costs while remaining within the borders of the European Union. This has become even more crucial since the pandemic, when transport from other parts of the world could become erratic at short notice.
Workers and their families, unable to make do on their low wages alone, constantly scramble for means to supplement their income. Many work overtime systematically; some choose to migrate for work abroad for a few months every year; yet others quit their factory jobs for more lucrative opportunities during the summers, only to return to the factories in the autumn. Stuck in the circle of deprivation and precarity, some have lived in improvised shacks on the edges of the city for decades. Most of the extremely vulnerable are Roma. As such, infrastructure growth neighbours the lack or decay of infrastructure and needs to be placed in the context of dramatic inequality on several fronts: the workings of the global neoliberal machine, the priorities of the state, the geography of the city.