"The Geotechnical Imaginary Of The Belt And Road" - By CWP Alum Andrew Chubb
What is the Belt and Road? Academics, pundits and policymakers have offered divergent answers ranging from a grand geostrategic gambit to an incoherent frenzy of sub-state commercial opportunism, from an inward-looking hinterland development strategy to the building of a global “community of common destiny for mankind”, and from an overflow of industry to a vacuous propaganda slogan. While there is evidence to support each of these arguments, this long and growing list lacks an integrative framework that could shed light on the relationships among the individual phenomena. This article offers a step in this direction, drawing from science and technology studies. It contends that these disparate perspectives on the BRI can be integrated into an understanding of the BRI as a geotechnical imaginary – a collectively imagined form of global life and order reflected in the design and performance of specific technological projects. This perspective foregrounds how China’s party-state’s capacious BRI slogan has mobilised imaginings – both affirmatory and oppositional – on a global scale. These shared imaginings, with divergent normative implications, suggest a broadening of the existing concept of sociotechnical imaginaries.
The Geotechnical Imaginary of the Belt and Road: Mobilising Imaginative Labour - IQAS Vol. 53 / 2022 iii, pp. 357–384 - Andrew Chubb
Andrew Chubb is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion. A graduate of the University of Western Australia, his work examines the linkages between Chinese domestic politics and international relations. More broadly, Andrew's interests include maritime and territorial disputes, strategic communication, political propaganda, and Chinese Communist Party history. Andrew is the author of Chinese Nationalism and the Gray Zone: Case Analyses of Public Opinion and PRC Foreign Policy (Naval War College Press, 2021) andthe PRC Overseas Political Activities: Risk, Reaction and the Case of Australia (Routledge and Royal United Services Institute, 2021).
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