Online Workshop / Mini conference
Friday, 27 October 2023
14:45 – 19:00 EEST (11:45 – 16:00 UTC)

The recent histories of Cyprus, Greece and Turkey show us that actors of all scales employed 'development' as a crucial rhetorical tool, ideological framework, and expected future for deep social and political change. Hence, development allowed these actors to mobilise people and resources for major socio-political transitions, geostrategic realignments, industrial progress, and environmental transformations. Embodying the material aspects of society-wide relations, infrastructures shape and are shaped by actors' actions, intentions, and visions, making them an inseparable component in every developmentalist political movement and endeavour. 

 

Historically, regimes and actors from both sides of the political spectrum considered infrastructures as the agents of economic growth and welfare and promise for progress and freedom. Current scholarship from Science and Technology Studies (STS), history of technology and architecture, anthropology and geography have indicated the strong interrelationship between infrastructure, power, and modernity. Moreover, examining infrastructures in their various stages of life has produced other ways of understanding social group formations, political power, and environmental challenges. A set of concepts and analytical tools such as technopolitics, logistical power, and Actor-Network-Theories of state and markets have all been employed to unfold the role of infrastructures in processes such as modernisation, state formation, nationalism, neoliberalisation, industrialisation and colonialism. In all these themes, infrastructures have proved critical in establishing future expectations, visions and imaginaries for actors engaged in such society-wide transformations. 

 

We invite case studies at this event, especially from Cyprus, Turkey and Greece, for a rare comparative perspective. While distinct in their own ways, these countries also share similar historical events, transformations, and governance cultures. Thus, we aim to explore the experiences of these Eastern Mediterranean countries to start a discussion on the role of infrastructures and development in their contemporary histories.We welcome presentations touching upon or cross-cutting themes such as (indicative):    

• State formation, power, and ideologies

• Expertise, environment, and resources

• Industrialisation, markets and economic models

• Labour and social movements.

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