Dams, Development, and Racialised Internal Peripheries: Hydraulic Imaginaries as Hegemonic Strategy in Pakistan

被引:15
作者
Akhter, Majed [1 ]
机构
[1] Kings Coll London, Dept Geog, London, England
关键词
Gramsci; hydraulic imaginary; critical water geography; Indus; infrastructure; WATER; NATION; URBAN; INFRASTRUCTURE; POWER; MODERNIZATION; GENDER; SPACE; CITY;
D O I
10.1111/anti.12817
中图分类号
P9 [自然地理学]; K9 [地理];
学科分类号
0705 ; 070501 ;
摘要
Dams and other large water infrastructures are more than mere technical projects in Pakistan. They carry a special symbolic burden and are understood by the state as vectors of modernisation. This paper interrogates the making of a statist hydraulic imaginary in Pakistan in the 1960s and its continued relevance today. This imaginary posits a technocratic state as the protagonist in a national narrative of hydro-modernisation. I argue that the production and dissemination of an imaginary of racialised internal peripheries as places of developmental backwardness is central to the Pakistani state's infrastructural interventions. I analyse images and narratives from state produced magazines and videos by contextualising them with respect to the cultural politics of hegemony. The paper advances debates in critical infrastructure studies via a critical reading of Antonio Gramsci's incomplete essay on the "Southern Question". It develops a tradition of cultural historical materialism-largely neglected by critical water geographers-attuned to the articulation of geographic unevenness, hegemony, and racial difference.
引用
收藏
页码:1429 / 1450
页数:22
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