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Paper short abstract

This paper examines how the development of anti-crisis infrastructure fuels the dynamics of authority and participatory governance, spanning collaboration, compliance, and resistance. It shows how technomoral politics shape claim-making, limit public engagement, and drive group fragmentation.

Paper long abstract

Large infrastructure projects involving high economic interests and moral stakes, such as public and environmental safety, are critical sites of negotiation between the state and communities, often polarizing people around associated controversies (Anand et al. 2018). Understanding how populations fragment through infrastructure development is crucial for illuminating the dynamics of authority and participatory governance, which range from collaboration to compliance to resistance.

This paper examines how populations living in disaster-prone areas fragment into publics along moral, economic, and epistemic lines during the development of anti-crisis infrastructure. Drawing on long-term ethnographic research on policymaking and civil activism surrounding the construction of a large dam in southern Japan—originally abandoned, but revived after the catastrophic flood of 2020—the study analyzes how technomoral politics shape claim-making processes. Informed by scholarship on technology, morality, and governance (Rose and Miller 1992; Shore 2024), the analysis shows how political actors combine technocratic procedures with moral idioms to determine which publics are eligible to advance claims and how these claims are legally addressed.

While technomoral politics can expand spaces for dissent and democratic engagement (Bornstein and Sharma 2016), this research highlights the pitfalls of morally infused technocratic policymaking. The findings show that the requirement to engage authorities through administrative and legal channels pushes people to seek out institutional niches to voice concerns and protect their interests. This dynamic contributes to group fragmentation and simultaneously constrains participatory governance. Moreover, especially in times of crisis, authorities draw on moral authority to further restrict the scope for “judicial activism.”