Infrastructure’s Long Shadow: From Central Asia to Ukraine

by Till Mostowlansky

Infrastructures can be conceptualized as networks that link up the built environment, people and technology. They might include energy, transport or communication, whilst also relating to natural resources, human bodies and other species. These networks often remain invisible when they function as planned yet suddenly appear in the public imagination when they fail, get destroyed or become subject to spectacular political projects. Over the past decade, infrastructure has also resurfaced as an issue of public interest in sites as diverse as the United States, China and Ukraine, often involving pressing concerns around security, economic stability and basic needs. However, with this focus on the present and future, the longer histories of infrastructure are often neglected. As a result, core features of infrastructure, such as the materialization of mundane violence, political control as well as socio-economic transformation remain less understood. Drawing on social science literature on infrastructure and fifteen years of research in Central Asia, this talk discusses concepts that might prove useful to study cases from Ukraine in the long view.