Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia

Max Hirsh

ISBN 10: 0824892925 / ISBN 13: 9780824892920

Published by University of Hawai'i Press, US, 2023

About this Item

Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia offers a new understanding of how technological innovation, geopolitical ambitions, and social change converge and cross-fertilize one another through infrastructure projects in Asia. This volume powerfully illustrates the multifaceted connections between infrastructure and three global paradigm shifts: climate change, digitalization, and China's emergence as a superpower. Drawing on fine-grained analyses of airports, highways, pipelines, and digital communication systems, the book investigates infrastructure both "from above," as perceived by experts and decision makers, and "from below," as experienced by middlemen, laborers, and everyday users. In so doing, it provides groundbreaking insights into infrastructure's planning, production, and operation.Focusing on cities and regions across Asia, the volume combines ten tightly interwoven case studies, from the Bosphorus to Beijing and from the Indonesian archipelago to the Arctic. Written by leading global infrastructure experts in the fields of anthropology, architecture, geography, history, science and technology studies, and urban planning, the book establishes a dialogue between scholarly approaches to infrastructure and the more operational perspective of the professionals who design and build it. This multidisciplinary method sheds light on the practitioners' mindset, while also attending to the materiality and agency of the infrastructures that they create. Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia is conceived as an act of translation: linking up related-yet thus far disconnected-research across a variety of academic disciplines, while making those insights accessible to a wider audience of students, infrastructure professionals, and the general public.

Seller Inventory # LU-9780824892920

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia
• Publisher: University of Hawai'i Press, US
• Publication Date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0824892925
• ISBN 13: 9780824892920
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 363 grams

About this title

Synopsis

In the twenty-first century, infrastructure has undergone a seismic shift from West to East. Once concentrated in Europe and North America, global infrastructure production today is focused squarely on Asia. Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia investigates the deeper implications of that pivot to the East. Written by leading international infrastructure experts, it demonstrates how new roads, airports, pipelines, and cables are changing Asian economies, societies, and geopolitics―from the Bosporus to Beijing, and from Indonesia to the Arctic. Ten tightly interwoven case studies powerfully illustrate infrastructure’s leading role in three global paradigm shifts: climate change, digitalization, and China’s emergence as a superpower.

Combining social science methods with mapping techniques from the design professions, Infrastructure and the Remaking of Asia establishes a dialogue between academic research on infrastructure and the professional insights of those responsible for infrastructure’s planning, production, and operation. By applying that mixed method to transport, energy, telecommunication, and resource extraction projects across Asia, the book synthesizes research on infrastructure from six academic fields, while making those insights accessible to a wider audience of students, professionals, and the general public.

For links to the open-access PDF and EPUB editions, chapter downloads, and detailed information, visit the project website: https://infrastructureasia.net/.

About the Authors

Max Hirsh is managing director of the Airport City Academy and a research fellow at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Till Mostowlansky is a research professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute Geneva.

Hallam Stevens is professor of interdisciplinary studies at James Cook University, Queensland, Australia.