Paper short abstract:

This paper contextualizes socioenvironmental conflicts due to welfare and mining interventions of the Venezuelan Amazon region in a historical shift from a no-to-infrastructure, environmentalist and sustainable development governmentality to an agenda of neo-extractivism and bio-political control.

Paper long abstract:

This paper contextualizes socioenvironmental conflicts due to welfare and mining interventions of the Venezuelan Amazon in a historical shift from a no-to-infrastructure, sustainable development governmentality to neo-extractivism and bio-political control. Opposition to road construction, together with environmentalist, locally-based development in-tune with scientific research, configured in the 80s-to-early-90s an alliance between policy-makers, the indigenous movement, NGOs and scientists, crystalized in several Amazonian national parks and biosphere reserves. The Caldera administration froze this in the mid 90´s, abandoning sustainability policies and constructing a huge military airstrip in the center of Amazonas state. Notwithstanding its pro-indigenist policies, the Bolivarian regime continued this tendency. While operating an expansion of State welfare through health attention and redistributive programs, after fifteen years it had all but dissolved the region´s environmental protection. New health attention programs reached further into the upper Orinoco hinterlands with military helicopters, dotting remotes communities with helipads, health posts and radios. Concomitantly, indigenous leadership was co-opted into state bureaucracy, land demarcation stalled, and wildcat mining benefitted from military complicity. This is topped by an effort to counteract the oil price plunge with a Chinese-funded gold and rare-earths mining macro-project. As the neo-extractivist agenda amalgamates indigenous and further opposition, the fight against road construction that coalesced resistance in the 90´s becomes a memory of a bygone era. Embracing biopolitical control rather than infrastructure, current developmentalism relies on space-time compression, facilitated by military flights and control of waterways, warping together socialist discourse, State capitalism and global markets in the thrust of extractive governmentality.

Paper short abstract:

Faith in complex mechanical technologies and vast engineering works is a recurrent feature of Egyptian State modernism. How has the ‘engineering mystique’ shaped the way infrastructures are conceived and deployed, for both developmental and political ends?

Paper long abstract:

Egypt's 'engineering mystique', it is argued, can be discerned in the social prestige of engineers and their imagined role in creating the modern state, as well as in narratives of development and modernity manifest in projects such as the Aswan High Dam, the nationalization of the Suez Canal, the launch of the first 'Arab' television satellite, the construction of the Cairo Metro, or the opening of the recent bi-lane Suez Canal. These point to a faith in complex mechanical technologies and vast engineering works as a way of projecting national grandeur and 'modernity', a fascination with the power of technology to improve and remake society, and an ideology in which a 'high tech' notion of infrastructure predominates. This paper seeks to explore this infrastructural imaginary, including its recurrence as a political tool for consolidating and legitimizing power, from the High Dam under Nasser to the bi-lane Suez Canal under the new president, Sisi. I ask: what counts as an infrastructure within the framework of Egyptian state modernism and what purposes (political, symbolic…) do such infrastructures serve, other than just generating electricity, allowing for transport, or facilitating communications.

Paper short abstract:

In post-socialist African cities like Maputo, land commodification is creating a Sisyphean dilemma in urban development by fueling imbalanced contest between the construction of fantastic infrastructure serving elites and ordinary infrastructure targeting the still unmet needs of the poor.

Paper long abstract:

In post-socialist African cities like Maputo, land commodification is enabling a starkly imbalanced contest between the development of fantastic infrastructure serving elites and rather ordinary infrastructure projects serving the basic (still unmet) needs of the poor. More specifically, this paper argues that the simultaneous implementation of a municipal participatory budgeting reform for basic capital investments and a large-scale infrastructure and real estate development plan (supported by national government and foreign capital) in the same physical space has created a Sisyphean dilemma. Just as small gains in ordinary infrastructure investments (e.g., wells, paved roads, etc.) are made through participatory budgets, larger projects (e.g., bridges, high-rise residential buildings, tourist facilities, etc.) funded by more expansive capital budgets are wiping out those gains in the same neighborhoods. In contexts of weak democracy, this simultaneous implementation of 'fantastic' and 'ordinary' infrastructure projects through the assignment of different funding mechanisms to them deepens difference and inequalities among extant poor and anticipated wealthier residents in Maputo. I also argue that fantastic plans and participatory budgeting initiatives are constitutive parts of the commodification agenda in post-Socialist states like Mozambique, as the latter politically enables the power behind former, while the former physically eviscerates gains made with the latter.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper I explore attempts to integrate water, time, and chemical infrastructures in Sri Lanka's irrigated agriculture system. I complicate theories of agrarian transformation, highlighting the need to consider the ways in which development infrastructures unify and break apart over time.

Paper long abstract:

Intensified agriculture involves the promotion of synthetic and mechanised inputs alongside the rationalisation of water and labour inputs. Critics argue that these processes often damage the environment and rural communities, leaving small farmers disadvantaged or dispossessed. Such analyses have also tended to assume that this process is more or less inevitable, and follows from the top-down imposition of new agricultural methods. In this paper I question these assumptions and argue that the intensification of farming requires the alignment of several infrastructures at a precise moment - something not easily accomplished and even when achieved is always in danger of decay. To show this, I explore the development, promotion, alignment, and collapse of water, time, and chemical infrastructures in Sri Lanka's Mahaweli irrigated agriculture systems and the various attempts by government to create an overarching subjective infrastructure, at the level of individual farmer dispositions, to unite them. Drawing from secondary sources held at the Mahaweli Library and ethnographic fieldwork in a Mahaweli village, I show how the unification of material and subjective infrastructures has always been precarious, and this owes to their inherent trend towards separation and 'falling out of time.' The consequence has been an only ever partial correspondence of material and subjective infrastructures, leading to repeated 'crises of management' at local and national levels. This finding complicates theories of agrarian transformation, highlighting the need to consider more carefully the ways in which development infrastructures unify and break apart over time, at different moments producing and undoing different effects.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the political conditions under which China’s overseas infrastructure projects benefit or adversely affect host country development by looking at China’s past infrastructure initiatives both at home and abroad.

Paper long abstract:

China is intensifying its effort to export infrastructure projects through new development banks (including the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Silk Road Fund, the New Development Bank of BRICS), global platforms (the G20 global infrastructure initiative and UN Financing for Development) and bilateral initiatives. China serves as an alternative source of financing and development model, having competitiveness in fast decision-making, easy financing and speedy implementation. While this effort is branded by Beijing as an engine of joint development and welcomed by many countries and international organisations for filling the infrastructure gap, most of the current media and scholarly discussions are focused on their strategic implications for Western countries and for traditional organisations. The political conditions under which China's overseas infrastructure projects benefit or adversely affect host country development are understudied. After all, infrastructure has not only facilitated growth and development in China, but also created social, political and economic problems. Economic growth stimulated by infrastructure investment does not automatically translate into sustainable development. By looking at China's past infrastructure projects both at home and abroad, this paper highlights several decisive political conditions for their developmental impact: first, the rationality and power relations in decision-making; second, institutions for governing safeguards; third, the composition of participating actors that determine income distribution.

Paper short abstract:

Focusing on a road connecting two cities in the Ecuadorian Amazon, this paper challenges the view that postneoliberalism is compatible with sustainable development. The 'left turn' is characterized not by its economic ideology but by its development imaginary based on Rostowian modernization theory.

Paper long abstract:

Much of the extensive literature concerning the momentous changes taking place in Latin America have been built around the implicit assumption that the processes of envisioning an alternative development paradigm under the rubric of 'buen vivir' and constructing a post-neoliberal state are inherently compatible as well as being mutually supportive and constitutive of each other. This paper challenges this assumption empirically and theoretically.

The necessary empirical evidence comes from a nearly 1000 kilometer road that has been newly paved in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The road connects two cities that are central to attempts to put nature to work for the 'Citizens Revolution': Lago Agrio, named after Texaco's home town in the United States and 'capital' of Ecuador's oil economy, and Zamora, the centre of an incipient mining boom fuelled by massive investment from a Chinese state-owned corporation. The paper analyzes the text and imagery of billboards placed by state planners alongside the road that seek to provide a retroactive justification for the road itself as well as legitimize further encroachment of extractive processes into the Amazon. It also critically interrogates development imaginaries undergirding the intensification of natural resource extraction and public infrastructure construction.

The paper argues that the incompatibility between 'buen vivir' and Latin American post-neoliberal political economy arises mainly from the ideological construction of the latter, which harks backs to 1960s modernization theory conceptualizations of development and progress. The tension between these two concepts is key to understanding deepening class-based conflicts in Ecuador.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation explores the strategies used by rural community organisations to attract infrastructure and development projects in the Bolivian Altiplano, drawing out the implications of these for understandings of public policy implementation.

Paper long abstract:

Although the potential and limitations of local participation in public policy have been hotly debated, the extent and nature of informal strategies enacted by community organisations to influence state institutions 'from below' is an understudied area. This presentation explores the techniques used by rural communities in their interactions with public institutions in rural Bolivia. It shows that community leaders engage in a combination of statistical manipulation, bribery, and selective engagement with social movements in order to secure development projects. These strategies are driven by a combination of material interests and political dynamics within rural communities. The implications of this for development are mixed: on the one hand the rural poor are capable of asserting their own agendas vis-à-vis the state so that they can benefit from public spending, while on the other hand their tactics have the potential to drive elite capture by better-off communities and perpetuate inefficient uses of public resources. Understanding the drivers of bottom-up strategies and their influence on local-level development processes is necessary for a more realistic understanding of the role of local communities in the implementation of public policy.

Paper short abstract:

The Indian government has embarked on an ambitious strategy to increase its solar power capacity to 100 GW by 2022. This paper will examine the political economy challenges associated with doing this in very little time and with very little policy space, with regards to manufacturing capacity.

Paper long abstract:

The Modi Government has embarked on an ambitious solar energy strategy over the past few years. The aim is for India's solar energy capacity to reach 100 GW by 2022, with the current capacity at a little over 7 GW. To achieve such targets, the government has initiated a number of reforms including making land acquisition much easier but it has also opened up bids on several solar energy projects across the country on a competitive basis. Those positive about the strategy have highlighted that this has resulted in solar power becoming cheaper than thermal power in India. However, there are serious questions about whether this is negatively impacting India's local manufacturing capacity in the solar energy sector and whether it is creating long-term dependency on foreign technology. Such dangers came to a head when the United States won a WTO ruling against India's local content requirements for solar energy investments in 2016.

This paper builds on 25 interviews undertaken with firms, government officials and consultants between March and April 2016. It will aim to highlight the political economy challenges associated with India's solar energy strategy thus far, particularly in relation to the speed of the strategy and the minimal space in which manufacturing capacity may be developed. It will aim to contribute to broader discussions about the political economy of India in relation to the consequences of market-led reforms. It will also showcase the new distribution of power that is accompanying clean energy transitions globally.

Paper short abstract:

This paper will discuss the way key actors (multiscalar government, facilitators, & village elite) shape the outcome of the direct-fund channeling to village level into building under-utilised toilets in Papua Province, Indonesia.

Paper long abstract:

A Community Driven Development Program (CDD), aiming to facilitate community planning and decision-making process leading to block grants to fund villager's self-prioritized infrastructure, has emerged as a new paradigm for building village infrastructure in the aid development community. The Government of Indonesia has allocated US$ 400 Million since 2007-2012 for a program covering around 79,000 villages. Despite the 'reform' promise in this remote and lack of infrastructure region in Indonesia, surprisingly in Papua Province, of 3,234 villages in Papua Province, Indonesia, who have been given this direct-fund grants, almost 70 per cent villages had used the grant to build a toilet, and only around 20% is effectively used. This PhD research contributes to discussion on a much-neglected aspect of CDD studies: the process that leads to the failure of this program to building underutilised infrastructures. In this research, I employ an actor-oriented approach with an emphasis to understand actors' practices combined with actors' interface analysis by Norman Long. I focus on the case of CDD in Papua Province, Indonesia, to unfold the practices and power dynamics of diverse actors, ranging from villagers, facilitators, officials (at the central and provincial level) and aid agency. In this paper, I will discuss the production of the 'toilets' to demonstrate how toilets is a convenient type of infrastructure that fits central government's control over budget absorption and to mitigate the Papua Nationalists, as well as villager's idea on modernisation.

Paper short abstract:

Studying the conflicting grounds between infrastructural development and cultural heritage protection of an the ethnic minority village in southwest China, I look at how plans are put on hold and cut corners to display contrary outcomes, and what this reveals about perceptions of government rule.

Paper long abstract:

My eleven months of ethnographic research is located in a Dong ethnic minority village in a mountainous valley in southeast Guizhou province, China's most impoverished regions. Owning to its well-preserved architectural exterior, the village is recognised for its cultural and historical setting under multiple national and transnational cultural heritage protection listings. Awarded the first listing of a nationally recognised traditional village, the locality is painted as peaceful and tranquil- a timeless setting, remaining the same as before. Yet to become that which it has always been requires infrastructural renovation and renewal. Discourse on the renovation of the village is found on conflicting grounds. Key actors address renovation as a means of restoring cultural heritage whilst others refer to it as fostering local development. Studying the variations that arise through discourse, I look at how infrastructural plans, and the financial resources to support them, are described, understood and imagined across key actors and local residents. In illustrating these themes, my paper shifts to discuss what happens when plans are put on hold, fail or cut corners to reveal contradictory outcomes. In unraveling these procedures, I portray how local residents make sense of contradictory outcomes as extensions of failed political and governmental rule. The subject of this paper is particularly relevant in exploring the impact national efforts to curb official graft measures under President Xi Jinping's rule have on infrastructural development and how people make sense of government plans that are so often placed on hold.