This article explores colonial (dis-)continuities between the planned Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) development corridor and the Uganda Railway (UR). The historical approach to infrastructure studies highlights the effects of large-scale infrastructures beyond their immediate material impact, and reveals their potential power to structure mobilities, historicities and politics of scale. With reference to relational theories, it is argued that the two projects gain their respective significance not only through their ability to connect distant places, but also by blocking and severing other competing ways of being mobile. Particularly, both infrastructure projects create technologies enabling easier and faster flow of capital and commodities but limit previously prevalent mobilities practised by caravans and semi-nomadic people in the region. Both projects, furthermore, produce particular ways of remembering the past and anticipating the future. The article identifies a major discontinuity in the politics of scale they respectively imply: while the UR aimed at producing a clear scalar hierarchy between empire and colony, the LAPSSET alleges to dissolve hard boundaries between scalar instances. This article is based on qualitative data collected during fieldwork along the proposed route of the LAPSSET corridor, as well as archive work regarding the UR.
In this paper, we show how communities in Northern Kenya proactively engage an unfolding megaproject and the temporalities it evokes-the Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET). We argue that the latitude communities have in contending with megaprojects is broader and more dynamic than passive reception of or outright resistance against the futures promised. By introducing the concepts of entangling and fraying, we emphasise the agency communities create for themselves by appreciating their strategies and expressions of stabilising or troubling the "megaproject". While entangling refers to practices through which communities attach additional features to an otherwise rather stable vision of its "meganess", fraying, in contrast, describes the strands that splice off towards different spatio-temporal imaginaries. We discuss these practices in four instances of engaging LAPSSET: constructing temporary homes at project sites; engaging in land reform; disputing land acquisition at oil exploration sites; and contesting a planned resort city. Muhtasari: Kwenye jarida hili, tunaonyesha jinsi jamii kaskazini mwa Kenya wanajihusisha na mradi wa muundo msingi unaojulikana kama Lamu Port South Sudan Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET). Tunaonesha kuwa uhusiano kati ya jamii na miradi ya miundo msingi ufanyika kwa njia mingi na sio tu ati hao huikubali ama huipinga. Tukitumia dhana mbili amabazo ni kujihusisha na kukabiliana tunaonyesha jinsi jamii huwa na ushawishi mkubwa na uwezo wa kutumia mbinu tofauti ambazo zinaweza kustahimilisha ama kuvuruga mradi huo. Katika dhana ya kujihusisha, tunaangazia jinsi jamiii huambatanisha matakwa yao na mipango maalum ambayo hutarajiwa kutoka kwa miradi "kubwa" ya miundo msingi. Dhana ya kukabiliana nayo inaashiria maoni tofauti ambazo haziambatani na fikira za wapangaji wa miradi. Tunafanya hivi kwa kuzungumzia matukio nne ambayo jamii wanajihusisha na mradi wa LAPSSET. Matukio haya ni ujenzi wa makaazi yanayodumu kwa muda mfupi kwenye maeneo ya mradi; mikakati ya jamii kusajili ardhi yao; pingamizi za ardhi kuchukulia kwa miradi ya mafuta; na pingamizi juu ya mipango ya ujezi wa mji mpya wa mapumziko.
Abstract. The article introduces collaborative comic creation (CCC) as a methodological tool. The central question it addresses is how marginalised imaginations of futures can be made visible in the context of the planned Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia-Transport (LAPSSET) in Kenya. The question assumes that infrastructure projects such as the LAPSSET corridor inscribe not only particular ways of moving into a landscape but also one specific temporality that marginalises other future-making practices. The paper participates in the ongoing debate about how imagined futures and future-making practices can be appreciated and analysed methodologically. It thus contributes to the literature on geographies of the future by drawing together conceptual insights from anthropology, infrastructure studies, and critical cartography. Based on these different approaches, the paper proposes to regard future-making practices not only in relation to contentious timelines but also in terms of lines made by moving and drawing on landscapes and surfaces. Using a review of existing social foresight methods as a basis, we describe the practical implementation of CCC. Subsequently, the analysis of one collaboratively produced comic illustrates how the method can help to visualise ambivalent and uncertain imaginations of different futures that oppose the unitary vision of modernity produced by dominant infrastructural visions of a single future. We conclude by reflecting on possible ways of developing the method further.
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