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SUMMARY:Infrastructure as techno-politics of differentiation: social effec
 ts of the Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya - Dr Gediminas Lesutis\, Researc
 h Associate\, Department of Geography
DTSTART:20191015T121000Z
DTEND:20191015T130000Z
UID:TALK131965@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Nancy Highcock
DESCRIPTION:The Standard Gauge Railway in Kenya\, a large-scale transport 
 project whose construction commenced in October 2016\, has been promoted b
 y the national government as a promise of “development” and “prosper
 ing people”. In this paper\, based on fieldwork research across differen
 t sites (government offices\, railway stations\, construction sites\, onbo
 ard trains\, population settlements around railway infrastructures) I focu
 s on material and semiotic forms of the SGR infrastructures through which 
 the SGR acquires the socio-political meaning of “development”. Analysi
 ng these infrastructural forms\, I argue that\, contrary to the state narr
 ative of “prospering people” of Kenya\, the SGR project exacerbates th
 e pre-existing socio-material relations of difference\, thereby constituti
 ng several distinct populations that perceive\, approach\, and are impacte
 d by the SGR in different ways. This is based on how these different group
 s are unevenly slotted into infrastructurally constituted aspirations of t
 he “development” and “future” of the contemporary Kenyan state. Th
 rough these analyses\, the paper\, first\, contributes to geographical sch
 olarship on mega-infrastructures by highlighting how infrastructures\, bes
 ides structural effects of ordering capitalist spaces and territorialities
 \, are also constitutive of people\, subjectivities\, and populations\, wh
 ich has been relatively unexplored in this strand of geographical research
 . Second\, highlighting how infrastructures entrench pre-existing socio-ma
 terial differences further\, the article also contributes to broader criti
 cal social science research on infrastructures by showing the importance o
 f not overemphasising infrastructure as contingently shaped\, in the ever-
 evolving process of remaking social\, economic\, and political relations\,
  as this body of work tends to do.
LOCATION:The Richard King Room\, Darwin College
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