Under Construction: Technologies Of Development In Urban Ethiopia Hardcover

New

Daniel Mains

Over the past decade, ethiopia has had one of the world's fastest growing economies, largely due to its investments in infrastructure, and it is through building dams, roads, and other infrastructure that the ethiopian state seeks to become a middle-income country by 2025. Yet most urban ethiopians struggle to meet their daily needs and actively oppose a ruling party that they associate with corruption and mismanagement. In under construction daniel mains explores the intersection of development and governance by examining the conflicts surrounding the construction of specific infrastructural technologies: asphalt and cobblestone roads, motorcycle taxis, and hydroelectric dams. These projects serve as sites for nation building and the means for the state to assert its legitimacy. The construction process-as well as ethiopians' experience of living with the disruption of construction zones-reveals the tension and conflict between the promise of progress and the possibility of failure. Mains demonstrates how infrastructures as both ethnographic sites and as a means of theorizing such concepts as progress, development, and the state offer a valuable contrast to accounts of african abjection and decline.

9781478005377

English

Duke University Press

13 Sep 2019

240

Daniel mains is wick cary associate professor of anthropology and african studies at the university of oklahoma and author of hope is cut: youth, unemployment, and the future in urban ethiopia. Rating details

Under Construction Stages Urgent Interventions Into Development And Governance, Citizen And State, Afro-Optimism And Neoliberal Pessimism in Order to Depict The Complexities of Infrastructure in Africa. Daniel Mains's Work Makes Clear That The Relationships Between Infrastructure, State, Labor, And Modernity Are Variable And Contingent-Sometimes Smooth, Often Sticky And Fraught-While Making a Compelling Case For Ethiopia as a Rich Site For Theoretical And Ethnographic attention. -- Charles Piot, Author of * The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles * "Based on Years of Ethnographic Research, Under Construction is a Magnificent And Thorough Exposition That Describes The Ambivalence And Hope Invested in Construction Projects in Ethiopia. Construction, Daniel Mains Demonstrates, is a Vital Location at Which Relationships Between States And Citizens Are grounded. While They Are Powerful Gatherings of Technology And Finance, Construction Projects Are Also Precarious And Full of danger. In Exploring The Tensions That Are Intrinsic to Construction Projects, Mains Effortlessly Brings Together Theorizations of Historical Materialism, Vital Materialism, And Affect Theory to Produce a Dazzling And Clear Account of How Construction is Incrementally And Yet Fundamentally Transforming The Political Landscape of Cities of The Global South." -- Nikhil Anand, Author of * Hydraulic City: Water And The Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai *