Under Maintenance: Contested Histories of Transport Infrastructure

Paper presentation as part of the panel organized by Olivier Keller (ETH) and Andreas Greiner (GHI-DC)

Collectively our papers investigate how transport infrastructures (rail and airways) shaped the lives of residents, operators, and users in the Global South and how social hierarchies were reflected in these systems. More than that, they demonstrate how these different groups of people, especially marginalized ones, shaped these structures in return. Together, the papers seek to complicate classical diffusionist narratives and reevaluate the transformative power infrastructure systems could unfold on societies in the Global South.