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Paper Short Abstract:

This paper focuses on a concrete road in Kazakhstan, a central stretch of the “Western Europe – Western China” highway. Through ethnographic methods, I show how local communities deal with the unanticipated effects of the celebrated material.

Paper Abstract:

Kazakhstan serves as a major transit country for logistical movements between China and Europe. The construction of the "Western Europe - Western China" (WE-WC) highway, as part of China's Belt and Road Initiative launched in 2013, linked Almaty, the financial capital, with the Sino-Kazakh border. The upgrade from a mere footpath to a concrete highway raised aspirations for speed, safety, and smooth transportation among local communities, who affectionately refer to it as the "betonka," or concrete road, due to its innovative material.

However, shortly after its completion, harsh weather conditions led to the appearance of the first cracks in the concrete and the once-promising dreams began to crumble. In my discussion about the unanticipated effects of the concrete highway, I seek to extend a debate about the temporality of infrastructure and its unforeseen consequences.

Drawing on 19 months of ethnographic field research conducted in communities along the "WE-WC" highway, I show how local communities and road users make sense of the highway and innovatively deal with its unanticipated shortcomings.

This paper aims to make three contributions: First, empirically I show how local communities along a concrete road deal with its imperfect realities on an everyday basis. Second, methodologically I shift the focus from the central nodes to the peripheries of supply chains. Third, theoretically I engage in a conversation on infrastructure temporality, with a particular focus on anticipation through the lens of concrete.