Paper short abstract:

This paper examines infrastructure through the world of infrastructure investment - the 'Infraspace'. The paper draws on ethnographic research from Colombo, London, Malé, and Singapore with public planners, capital financiers, development banks, and heads of government.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines infrastructure and the state by exploring the world of infrastructure investment, referred to by the industry as, 'Infraspace'. Starting with financial institutions and multilateral development agencies that steer global infrastructure money, it will trace the financial, technical, bureaucratic and diplomatic journey of an infrastructure project. Examining the economic, social, and political architecture of infrastructure investment and development pulls into focus the relationship between states, state owned enterprises, and multilateral financial institutions. Drawing on ethnographic research from Colombo, London, Malé, and Singapore with public planners, capital financiers, development banks, consultants and heads of government, the paper examines the diplomacy afforded through - and required within - international infrastructure development. Focussing specifically on the Maldives, the paper engages with two different regimes. The first, South Asia's longest dictatorship: a regime that did not make itself amenable to foreign investment, kept infrastructure development small in scale and centred around the capital, Malé. The Second regime, the Maldives' first democratically elected government: far less risk averse when it came to foreign investment, favoured an agenda of decentralisation, and implemented larger more ambitious infrastructure development projects. The paper examines the social life of infrastructure. Rather than focus primarily on the social and cultural consequences of infrastructural change, however, or whether the political promise and aspiration of infrastructure measures up to everyday use, the point of departure for this article is the social, economic, and political relations that produce infrastructure. Such an examination requires a journey beyond the state and through Infraspace.