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From the construction of domestic megaprojects (dams, roads, railways, etc.) to the negotiation of internationally financed ports and power plants, promises and risks of infrastructure are often at the forefront of public debates around the world. China, in particular, stands out as an exemplary “infrastructural state” that rearticulates power and development through spectacular infrastructure building. This course introduces students to a rapidly growing field in anthropology and related disciplines that examines the boom and bubble of China’s infrastructural development. Major questions that frame our inquiry include: What is infrastructure and how can it broaden our understandings of the social and the political? In what sense does infrastructural development become a symbol of modernization and state formation? How are infrastructure projects leveraged to challenge or perpetuate social inequalities? What imaginaries do these projects engender surrounding both progress and decay, and what happens when state-sponsored infrastructure fails or becomes delayed? Drawing on a range of theoretical and empirical studies, students will learn to think about and with infrastructure both “from above” and “from below,” focusing not just on its entanglements with state powers, institutionalized forces, and geopolitics, but also on the intersections of people, objects, and practices that provide for and reproduce social life on a daily basis. In addition, students will gain more balanced views of China’s state-orchestrated infrastructural development both domestically and overseas.

Introduction: What is at stake? Why does it matter?

Modernization and Statecraft

Construction and Destruction

Border and Development

Connectivity and Control

Labor (1)

Labor (2)

Urbanization and Urbanism

Mobility and Immobility

Technology and Technopolitics

Time and Affect