Infrastructural attachments : austerity, sovereignty, and expertise in Kenya / Emma Park.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Park, Emma, 1984- author.

Series:

e-Duke books scholarly collection

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Infrastructure (Economics)--Political aspects.

Infrastructure (Economics)--Social aspects.

Economic development--Kenya.

Technology and state--Kenya.

Telecommunication--Kenya.

Roads--Kenya--Design and construction.

Kenya--Politics and government.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xv, 282 pages) : illustrations, maps.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2024.

Summary:

"In Infrastructural Attachments, Emma Park argues that the delegatory technopolitics of austerity have been the organizing logic of statecraft in Kenya since the late-nineteenth century, calling into question the novelty of austerity as a mode of governance and a lived experience. In making this case, this historical ethnography explores the history of road construction in the late-nineteenth century, efforts to expand a radio broadcasting network in the interwar period through the 1950s, and the consolidation and expansion of mobile phones and digital financial services in the 2000s to offer a novel account of the austere state in Kenya. These histories indicate that company and state officials have long been deeply dependent on African knowledge workers whose expertise and labor has rarely, if ever, been adequately acknowledged or compensated. By detailing the infrastructural forms and knowledges which emerged among the users and citizens who shaped, repaired, and re-made their everyday material worlds in eastern Africa, Park demonstrates both the long legacy and material effects of privatization, austerity governance, and neoliberal policy"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

A Divisible Sovereignty: The Imperial British East Africa Company, the Crown, and the Sultanate in the Competitive World of Nineteenth-Century Eastern Africa

The Politics of Valuation: Building Attachments, "Taxing" Infrastructures, and Transforming Expert Work into Labor

"Tropicalising" Technologies: Cable and Wireless Ltd. and Making Broadcasting "Work"

Broadcasting the Future: Airwaves and the Politics of Affinity

The Politics of Divisibility : Safaricom and the Remaking of the Corporate Nation-State

Safaricom's Austere Labor Regime: The Expropriation and Subsumption of Affective Work.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Print version: Park, Emma, 1984- Infrastructural attachments.

ISBN:

9781478060093

1478060093

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.