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Chukudu Politics: The Relevance of Infrastructural Absences for Governmental Power and State Failure in the Post-Colonial world

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The Global Politics of Science and Technology - Vol. 2

Part of the book series: Global Power Shift ((GLOBAL))

Abstract

This chapter explores an analytical gap emerging at the intersection of political science and science and technology studies when their gaze is turned towards postcolonial Africa. Where political science has been bad at dealing with the importance of technological infrastructures for the constitution of governmental power, science and technology studies have hitherto been less attentive to situations in which such ‘infrastructures of rule’ are absent. This chapter aims at tentatively exploring this gap by pointing to the relevance of technological infrastructures in postcolonial Sub-Saharan Africa. It does so both through a cursory overview of literatures that might help articulate this problematique and by discussing the role of absences in technological infrastructures—such as roads, statistical tools, and government offices—in the historical unfolding of state formation of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The example of the chukudu—an improvised wooden transport utility that allows Congolese to go about despite decrepit infrastructures—is used to unpack the significance for infrastructural absences for social processes. Generalizing beyond the example of the chukudu, this chapter offers novel insights in the importance of technological asymmetries in global power-relations in postcolonial contexts.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The pervasiveness of social contract theory for the framing of state building efforts in policy circles is illustrated, for instance, by the fact that UNDP explicitly subtitles its 2012 policy framework report ‘securing the social contract’ (UNDP 2012).

  2. 2.

    cf. Barad (2003), Haraway (1991), Jasanoff (2004), Latour (1993), Law and Mol (1995), Mol (1998), J. Murdoch (1997).

  3. 3.

    For a more elaborate discussion, see, for instance, Latour (2005) and Müller (2012).

  4. 4.

    Save for a few exceptions, most notably Hecht (2012) and Rottenburg (2009a, b).

  5. 5.

    See, for instance, Carroll (2006), Guldi (2012), Hannah (2000), Headrick (1979), Mitchell (1988), Murdoch and Ward (1997).

  6. 6.

    African Union (2011), Bynens and Taylor (2012), Foster and Briceño-Garmendia (2010), Hoeffler (1999), Reed and Miranda (2007), Schwartz et al. (2004), The African Development Bank Group (2010), Ulimwengu et al. (2009).

  7. 7.

    Source: interviews conducted in Kinshasa, September 2012.

  8. 8.

    Interview with gold trader, Arua, April 2012.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Global Studies, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Peer Schouten

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  1. University of Bonn Center for Global Studies, Bonn, Germany

    Maximilian Mayer

  2. GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany

    Mariana Carpes

  3. Institute of Political Science and Sociology, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany, Institute of Development Research and Development Policy (IEE), Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany, Bochum, Bonn, Germany

    Ruth Knoblich

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Schouten, P. (2014). Chukudu Politics: The Relevance of Infrastructural Absences for Governmental Power and State Failure in the Post-Colonial world. In: Mayer, M., Carpes, M., Knoblich, R. (eds) The Global Politics of Science and Technology - Vol. 2. Global Power Shift. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-55010-2_15

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