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Paper short abstract

Bringing insights from Georgia, Kosovo and Uzbekistan, this paper examines the contemporary ‘infrastructural imperialism’ of the Turkish state through the lens of everyday geopolitics. In so doing, we offer three novel analytical concepts – infra-imaginaries, infra-power and infra-subjectivities.

Paper long abstract

In former European empires, colonial powers developed infrastructure in metropolitan centers through the extraction of resources. What we observe today is a different configuration: rising economic powers increasingly build infrastructure in other states as a means of projecting influence and creating forms of soft power. This has been termed ‘infrastructural imperialism’ (Bryant, forthcoming).

This paper focuses on the infrastructural imperialism of Turkey, through both state and non-state actors, drawing on ethnographic insights from Georgia, Kosovo, and Uzbekistan. Located along the Eurasian corridor and shaped by overlapping geopolitical influences, these three cases offer an important vantagepoint from which to analyse contemporary infrastructural imperialism through the lens of everyday geopolitics, that is, the ways geopolitical imaginaries and tropes operate in daily life, and how everyday practices contribute to the construction of the geopolitical.

We do this through a threefold analytical framework. First, we analyse infra-imaginaries, or how infrastructure projects generate new visions of (global) futures and reconfigure imaginaries of the global distribution of power. Second, we examine infra-power, in which overt forms of extraction are replaced by relationships framed as equal, fraternal, or mutually beneficial. Third, we explore infra-subjectivities, or new forms of political subjectivity that are produced through and in relation to infrastructure. Through these frameworks, we aim to scale up anthropological analyses of infrastructure to the level of geopolitical and imperial formations.