MENA568
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MENA568 - Infrastructure in the Middle East
Course ID
040493
Course Description
Scholarship on infrastructure underlines how systems tend to become invisible when they function well. When they break down, however, they are easy to notice, they become exposed. At times, the dysfunctionality of infrastructures represents how people's expectations of modernity dissipate. Faltering infrastructures are constitutive of the global anxiety regarding humanity's political, social, economic, and environmental future.
This course proposes that studying social life in the Middle East requires an examination of infrastructures, as social relations are constituted in uneven and explicative ways across such networks. Over the course of the semester, we will explore the occasions when infrastructures prove unreliable and inadequate, and study how these breakdowns can variously serve as moments of vulnerability, opportunity, or consolidation of power. Infrastructures, rather than being an abstract political terrain of struggle, are often the materialization of the politics of the state. Since infrastructures involve multiple government and private entities and populations with different expectations and interests, what are the ways in which they become critical for regulating and revealing whose imaginaries of the future become prioritized? How do infrastructures become exposed when the break down, especially in terms of the various inequalities they make known within the spaces they connect? What kinds of political work can such visibility of infrastructures do? Alternatively, what are the shortcomings of a paradigm of visibility, particularly in states where infrastructure has long been perceived as \"failed\". Readings from across the region will help us unpack the various social, political and economic workings of infrastructure.
The participants are not expected to have any background regarding the issues that will be covered during this course. We expect each individual will bring their own experiences to the course as a researcher, in addition to providing rigorous commentaries regarding course material.
This course proposes that studying social life in the Middle East requires an examination of infrastructures, as social relations are constituted in uneven and explicative ways across such networks. Over the course of the semester, we will explore the occasions when infrastructures prove unreliable and inadequate, and study how these breakdowns can variously serve as moments of vulnerability, opportunity, or consolidation of power. Infrastructures, rather than being an abstract political terrain of struggle, are often the materialization of the politics of the state. Since infrastructures involve multiple government and private entities and populations with different expectations and interests, what are the ways in which they become critical for regulating and revealing whose imaginaries of the future become prioritized? How do infrastructures become exposed when the break down, especially in terms of the various inequalities they make known within the spaces they connect? What kinds of political work can such visibility of infrastructures do? Alternatively, what are the shortcomings of a paradigm of visibility, particularly in states where infrastructure has long been perceived as \"failed\". Readings from across the region will help us unpack the various social, political and economic workings of infrastructure.
The participants are not expected to have any background regarding the issues that will be covered during this course. We expect each individual will bring their own experiences to the course as a researcher, in addition to providing rigorous commentaries regarding course material.
Min Units
3
Max Units
3
Repeatable for Credit
No
Grading Basis
GRD - Regular Grades A, B, C, D, E
Career
Graduate
Course Requisites
May be convened with
MENA468
Component
Lecture
Optional Component
No