Amorphous infrastructure

Contesting the proposed Yuam River water diversion project in the Salween River Basin

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4464866
AutoresZali Fung (0000-0003-1754-5616, The University of Melbourne, autor correspondente)
Ano2024
Volume7
Fascículo6
Páginas2386-2412
Data de publicação2024-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEnvironment and Planning E Nature and Space (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2514-8486 • E-ISSN: 2514-8494
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/25148486241288366
OpenAlexW4403792463
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas5
Referências citadas57

Recent studies in human geography and political ecology have examined the anticipatory politics of proposed infrastructure and their effects. Less work analyses how speculation and rumour are mobilised to promote or resist such infrastructures. In this paper, I examine how speculative ideas about long-proposed hydropower dams and transbasin water diversions in the Salween River Basin are strategically deployed by differently placed actors working towards project development or demise. I draw on empirical research on the proposed Yuam River water diversion project in Northwest Thailand and near the Thai-Myanmar border. I develop a conceptualisation of proposed infrastructures as amorphous as they constantly change form and enrol a shifting network of actors, and development plans and imaginaries. The Yuam diversion becomes amorphous through the contested 'facts' of the case and over time. I illustrate this using two longitudinal examples. First, infrastructure is made amorphous through protracted development processes for the Yuam diversion and earlier iterations. Second, I examine speculative ideas about how the Yuam diversion is intertwined with proposed dams in the Basin including the Hatgyi Dam in Myanmar. In this case, the lack of confirmed project developers and financiers for the Yuam diversion, and rumours of Chinese actors' involvement under the Belt and Road Initiative, creates strategic space for project promotion and resistance. What is at stake is not just theorising proposed infrastructures as speculative ideas but how the 'amorphous' qualities of infrastructure are deployed strategically, by whom, and to what effect

Cartography · Drainage basin · Geography · Geomorphology · Geotechnical engineering · Hydrology (agriculture · Structural basin · Water diversion · Water resource management · Environmental Science · Hydropower, Displacement, Environmental Impact · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Geology