The geographies of colonial infrastructures: Mobility, im/materiality, and politics on walking trails in the Middle East
The geographies of colonial infrastructures: Mobility, im/materiality, and politics on walking trails in the Middle East
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殖民基础设施的地理：中东步行道上的流动性、非物质性和政治
DOI：
10.1111/tran.12599
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发表时间：
2023
影响因子：
3.3
通讯作者：
Mason O
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Mason O
在过去的20年里，中东和北非（MENA）地区的徒步路线不断扩大，包括亚伯拉罕之路、巴勒斯坦遗产之路、约旦之路、以色列国家之路、黎巴嫩山之路和西奈之路。许多走上这些小径的人主要是为了休闲，然而，将这些小径降级为仅仅是文化或休闲场所，就会错过不那么明显但同样重要的空间、流动性和殖民主义的纠缠。这些小径的发展与（后）殖民时期和移民-殖民时期的流动限制以及控制这种流动的相关材料和想象中的基础设施的背景相吻合。通过关注步行道的非物质和状态/体现张力，本文展示了一个看似无害的地点如何丰富对基础设施的理解，并探索殖民主义的流动性和暂时性。为了通过步道了解基础设施与殖民主义之间的关系，我采用了一种混合方法，结合了参与性观察、访谈和与步道有关的官方材料的话语分析。这种方法使官方叙述与经验之间的生产性张力得以显现。在此过程中，本文围绕殖民地基础设施的地理位置提出了三个论点。首先，民族主义是如何嵌入到路线的流动性中的。其次，探索基础设施之间的亲密关系如何突显资本主义与殖民主义之间的持续联系。第三，如何拒绝基础设施建设，并以其他方式进行想象。在这些流动、亲密和拒绝中，殖民基础设施的扩展地理学出现了，这对地理学术有两个更广泛的贡献。首先，需要将注意力集中在中东和北非地区，而不是更容易围绕国家或地缘/政治实践的主导焦点。其次，对步行道的关注如何将话语和代表性与经验和具体化保持持续的关系和紧张关系的场所集中起来。
The past 20 years have seen an expansion of walking trails across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, including the Abraham Path, Palestine Heritage Trail, Jordan Trail, Israel National Trail, Lebanon Mountain Trail, and Sinai Trail. Many of those who walk these trails do so primarily for leisure, yet to relegate these trails to being merely cultural or leisure sites is to miss the less visible but equally important entanglements of space, mobility, and colonialism. The growth of these trails coincides with a context of (post)colonial and settler‐colonial mobility restrictions and the associated material and imagined infrastructures that control that movement. By attending to the im/material and state/embodied tensions of walking trails, this paper demonstrates how an innocuous‐looking site can enrich understanding of infrastructures and work exploring the mobilities and temporalities of colonialism. To understand the relationships between infrastructure and colonialism through walking trails, I employ a mixed‐method approach combining participant observation, interviews, and discourse analysis of official material pertaining to trails. Such an approach enables the productive tension between official narratives and experiences to emerge. In doing so, this paper makes three arguments surrounding the geographies of colonial infrastructures. First, how nationalism is embedded in the mobilities of trails. Second, how exploring the intimacies of infrastructure can highlight ongoing connections of capitalism and colonialism. Third, how infrastructure might be refused and imagined otherwise. In these mobilities, intimacies, and refusals an expanded geography of colonial infrastructure emerges that makes two broader contributions to geographical scholarship. First, the need to centre attention on the MENA region beyond dominant foci that orientate more readily around state or geo/political practices. Second, how a focus on walking trails centres a site in which the discursive and representative is in constant relationship and tension with the experiential and embodied.