IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ctwqxx/v42y2021i5p996-1013.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Building on the ruins of empire: the Uganda Railway and the LAPSSET corridor in Kenya

Author

Listed:
  • Johannes Theodor Aalders

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Johannes Theodor Aalders, 2021. "Building on the ruins of empire: the Uganda Railway and the LAPSSET corridor in Kenya," Third World Quarterly, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 42(5), pages 996-1013, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:42:y:2021:i:5:p:996-1013
    DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2020.1741345
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01436597.2020.1741345
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/01436597.2020.1741345?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gannon, Kate & Pettinotti, Laetitia & Surminski, Swenja & Ndilhana, Edward & Nyumba, Tobias, 2022. "Delivering the Sustainable Development Goals through development corridors in East Africa: a Q-Methodology approach to imagining development futures," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112965, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Bouraima, Mouhamed Bayane & Alimo, Philip Kofi & Agyeman, Stephen & Sumo, Peter Davis & Lartey-Young, George & Ehebrecht, Daniel & Qiu, Yanjun, 2023. "Africa's railway renaissance and sustainability: Current knowledge, challenges, and prospects," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    3. Schetter, Conrad & Mkutu, Kennedy & Müller-Koné, Marie, 2022. "Frontier NGOs: Conservancies, control, and violence in northern Kenya," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    4. Bouraima, Mouhamed Bayane & Qiu, Yanjun & Stević, Željko & Simić, Vladimir, 2023. "Assessment of alternative railway systems for sustainable transportation using an integrated IRN SWARA and IRN CoCoSo model," Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:ctwqxx:v:42:y:2021:i:5:p:996-1013. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/ctwq .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.