Evental Infrastructure: Momentous Geographies of Technoscience Production

Abstract

This article addresses recent valorizations of infrastructure as a vital lens for understanding and explaining the constitution of modern life. It argues that greater care needs to be shown toward the evental (or events-led) underpinnings of infrastructure to accurately grasp the latter’s space-ordering powers. Indeed, existing work on infrastructure has tended to stress the postformative political effects of infrastructure, omitting the events-led triggers that continually reproduce technoscience realities. Even among scholars who recognize the role of social agencies in technoscience production, the propensity remains to treat these interactions as a bundle of rational negotiations and contestations that then go on to determine infrastructure’s final forms. To foster new appreciations of the deep dynamics responsible for infrastructure’s production, this article uses the case of an airspace upgrade in the South China Sea to demonstrate the centrality of events—including engineered ones—in steering technoscience development in air transport. It considers how a series of reframings, ruptures, and catastrophes—corresponding with commercial, affective, and accidental events—have precipitated fifteen years of modifications to airspace infrastructure in Southeast Asia. Analyzing two aviation report series alongside meeting proceedings, news articles, and semistructured interviews with a postqualitative touch, the article calls for renewed attention on the various exigencies that uncertainly drive infrastructural (and wider spatial) outcomes. The article concludes by reflecting on the theoretical purchase of evental infrastructure and the momentous geographies through which its politics must be tackled.

本文探讨了近年来基础设施的政府定价现象, 以之为窗口理解和解读现代生活的架构。作者认为, 基础设施在事件（或事件导向）方面的根基应受到更大的关注, 以此准确掌握基础设施的空间排序能力。 目前在基础设施方面的工作目标通常都侧重于其建成后带来的政治影响, 但这些工作忽略了在现实中, 因事件导向的触发因素不断产生的技术科学现状。有的学者已意识到了社会机构在技术科学生产中的作用, 并倾向于认为这些互动方式就是进行一系列的理性谈判和辩论, 然后再决定基础设施的最终形式。 为了促进人们对基础设施生产深层动力进行全新思考, 本文以南海空域事态的升级为例, 解读了事件（包括工程事件）在引导航空运输技术科学发展中的重要性。文中探讨了一系列与商业、情感和意外事件对应的重构、断裂和灾难, 以及要如何促成东南亚对空域基础设施进行持续十五年的改造。通过分 析两个系列航空报告以及会议记录、新闻文章和略带后定性特点的半结构化访谈, 本文呼吁重新关注各种促使基础设施（乃至更广范围）产生不确定结果的紧急情况。在文章的最后, 作者思考了当事基础设施在理论上的获取方式, 以及亟需处理的重要地理政治学问题。

Este artículo aboca recientes actitudes que valorizan la infraestructura como lente vital para entender y explicar la constitución de la vida moderna. Aquí se sostiene que se requiere mostrar un mayor cuidado hacia los puntales episódicos (o que llevan al episodio) de la infraestructura, para captar con exactitud los poderes ordenadores de la última. Ciertamente, el trabajo que existe sobre infraestructura ha tendido a enfatizar los efectos políticos posformativos de la infraestructura, omitiendo los detonantes conducentes a eventos que continuamente reproducen las realidades de la tecnociencia. Incluso entre eruditos que reconocen el papel de las agencias sociales en la producción de tecnociencia, se mantiene la propensión a tratar estas interacciones como un manojo de negociaciones y contestaciones racionales que después prosiguen en su empeño de determinar las formas finales de la infraestructura. Para impulsar nuevas apreciaciones de la profunda dinámica responsable de la producción de infraestructura, este artículo utiliza el caso de la actualización de un espacio aéreo del Mar Meridional de la China para demostrar la centralidad de los eventos––incluso los de la ingeniería––en la orientación del desarrollo de la tecnociencia en el transporte aéreo. Se considera el modo como una serie de reformulaciones, rupturas y catástrofes––asociadas a eventos comerciales, afectivos y accidentales––han precipitado quince años de modificaciones de la infraestructura del espacio aéreo en el Sudeste Asiático. Analizando dos series de informes de la aviación junto con las actas de reuniones, artículos de noticieros y entrevistas semiestructuradas con un toque poscualitativo, el artículo demanda una atención renovada hacia las varias exigencias que de manera incierta controlan los resultados infraestructurales (y del espacio más amplio). El artículo concluye con una reflexión sobre la compra teórica de infraestructura episódica, y las geografías trascendentes a través de las cuales debería enfrentarse su política.

Key Words:

• airspace
• event
• infrastructure
• postqualitative
• technoscience

关键词:

• 领空
• 事件
• 基础设施
• 后定性
• 技术科学

Palabras clave:

• espacio aéreo
• evento
• infraestructura
• poscualitativo
• tecnociencia

Acknowledgments

The writing of this article has gone through many evental moments of its own. The author thanks Nik Heynen and the anonymous reviewers for their generous feedback and encouragement. He is also grateful to his 12 interviewees, and to colleagues in attendance of (in chronological order) the NUS Social and Cultural Geography Reading Group, the “Infrastructure and Making of Modern East Asia” Workshop at Hong Kong University, and the “Geographies of Responsibility” Sessions at the 2019 American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. Figure 1 draws on Daniel Feher’s excellent cartographic work at https://www.freeworldmaps.net/asia/southeastasia/southeastasia-outline-map.jpg. All errors remain the author’s.

Notes

Notes

1 ADS-B surveillance depends on aircraft broadcasting automatic signals to the ground to produce a radar-like image of airspace.

2 Although there were other series that had been surveyed, two in particular—ADS-B Study and Implementation Task Force and Southeast Asia Sub-Regional ADS-B Working Group—helped pinpoint the evental nature of ADS-B and the implementation plan’s starts and stops.

3 The consultant’s name was not disclosed, but from Singapore’s consulting history, the reviewing state was likely to be from Europe, North America, or Oceania.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the UK Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (Grant No. SGCR-2011-72) and the NUS Start Up Grant (Grant No. R-109-000-217-133).

Notes on contributors

Weiqiang Lin

WEIQIANG LIN is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge, Singapore 117570. E-mail: [email protected]. His work examines the cultural geographies of mobilities and infrastructures, and his research interests include the production of airspaces, the technological framings of air logistics, and labor and automation in airports.