Creole Infrastructure: States, Neoliberalism and Everyday Practices in Secondary African Cities

基础设施的研究是当代城市地理学的核心，特别是从社会技术的角度研究基础设施网络作为现代城市条件的关键媒介（Graham & Marvin 2001; Amin 2004; Swyngedouw 2004）。最近，在南方城市进行的研究重新激发了这类辩论，该研究挑战了基于有限数量城市经验的网络化基础设施与当代城市主义之间联系的流行理论（McFarlane 2008;罗宾逊2016; Lawhon et al 2017）。该奖学金的主要研究目标是通过增加对城市基础设施的学术和政策理解来促进这一研究领域，特别是在全球南部。水基础设施的研究-以及政治经济环境以及各种政策，行为体和实践如何塑造这些基础设施-对于扩大公平获得水资源至关重要。虽然非洲的大多数城市居民生活在人口不足50万的城市，而且预计人口增长将集中在这些城镇（联合国，2014年），但关于城市基础设施的研究主要集中在大城市。小城市很少被提到作为新自由主义化遗漏的地方的例子（Bakker 2013）。然而，很少有研究探讨小城市实际存在的基础设施。该项目通过调查非洲一个小城市（几内亚比绍巴法塔）的供水情况来解决这一差距。它显示了与政治经济权力中心的距离、薄弱的机构和严重的资源短缺如何影响小城市水治理的可能性（De Boeck et al 2009; Jaglin et al 2011; Förster et al 2018）。该项目除了研究难以研究的城市的供水问题外，还对学术辩论做出了独特的贡献，使人们更加关注全球政策、当地社会政治进程和塑造非洲城市基础设施的具体实践。当前倾向于过度强调新自由主义化进程的理论方法无法捕捉非洲城市的复杂性（帕内尔等人，2012年; Lawhon等人，2014年）。在国家或资本主义关系不是塑造城市化的关键因素的情况下，尤其如此。本研究发展了克里奥尔基础设施的概念，以研究在城市基础设施的现场生产中汇聚的多种力量和实践。它建立在“多样化的新自由主义”（Brenner et al 2010）的概念化以及围绕集合和日常生活的想法基础上，以理解城市的多样性（Simone 2011）。克里奥尔语一词被用来描述一系列动机的相互混合，这是一个持续的、创造性的、但也是有选择的、塑造城市化的过程。关于政策流动性的研究讨论了政策模型在不同背景下移动和着陆时如何发生变化（McCann & Ward 2014）。然而，很少有研究审查循环政策如何转化为实际的基础设施实践（Monstadt & Schramm 2017）或研究非洲城市之间的最佳实践循环。该项目分析了法律和政策模式是如何通过国家和非国家行为者的行动在基础设施实践中制定的，并对新兴的本土治理模式进行了理论化。它还研究了几内亚比绍两个小城市之间的模型旅行，并评估这些短途交流是否有助于改善城市居民获得安全和负担得起的网络供水。它还扩大了我的博士研究，为未来的研究，将寻求扩大我的博士重点经验和理论的理解发展赠款建议通过考虑莫桑比克贝拉和楠普拉的案例，从较小城市的角度探讨了基础设施问题。

Scholarship on infrastructure is central to contemporary urban geography, especially socio-technical perspectives examining infrastructural networks as key mediators of the modern urban condition(Graham & Marvin 2001; Amin 2004; Swyngedouw 2004). Recently, such debates have been re-energised by research conducted in southern cities, which has challenged prevailing theorisations of the links between networked infrastructures and contemporary urbanism based on the experiences of a limited number of cities (McFarlane 2008; Robinson 2016; Lawhon et al 2017). This fellowship's primary research aim is to contribute to this research field by adding to scholarly and policy understandings of urban infrastructure, particularly in the global south.The study of water infrastructure - and how political economic circumstances alongside a variety of policies, actors and practices shape these infrastructures - is crucial in expanding equitable access to water. While most urban dwellers in Africa live in cities with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants, and population growth is expected to be concentrated in these towns (UN 2014), research on urban infrastructure is mostly centred on large cities. Small cities are sparsely mentioned as examples of those places left out by neoliberalisation (Bakker 2013). Yet, there are few studies exploring actually existing infrastructure in smaller cities. This project addresses this gap by investigating water supply in a small African city: Bafatá, Guinea-Bissau. It shows how distance to centres of political economic power, weak institutions, and acute shortages of resources shape possibilities for water governance in small cities (De Boeck et al 2009; Jaglin et al 2011; Förster et al 2018). As well as researching water supply in hardly-studied cities, this project makes a distinctive contribution to academic debates by bringing into closer focus the specific assemblages of global policies, local socio-political processes and situated practices shaping urban infrastructure in an African city. Current theoretical approaches which tend to over-emphasise neoliberalisation processes cannot capture the complexity of African cities (Parnell et al 2012; Lawhon et al 2014). This is especially the case in contexts where the state or capitalist relations are not the key agents shaping urbanization. This study develops the notion of Creole Infrastructure to examine the multiple forces and practices converging in the situated production of urban infrastructure. It builds on conceptualisations of 'variegated neoliberalisms' (Brenner et al 2010) and ideas around assemblages and the everyday to make sense of urban multiplicities (Simone 2011). The term creole is used to depict the reciprocal intermixing of an array of motivations as an ongoing and creative, but also selective, process shaping urbanization. Research on policy mobility discusses how policy models mutate when moving between and landing in different contexts (McCann & Ward 2014). Yet, there are few studies scrutinising how circulating policies translate into actual infrastructural practices (Monstadt & Schramm 2017) or studying the circulation of best practices between African cities. This project analyses how laws and policy models are enacted in infrastructural practices through the actions of state and non-state actors, and theorises emerging vernacular governance models. It also examines the travels of models between two small cities in Guinea-Bissau and assesses whether these short-distance exchanges can work to improve access to safe and affordable networked water for urban-dwellers.While this fellowship focuses primarily on consolidating my PhD research, it also expands my doctoral research by developing a grant proposal for future research that will seek to extend my PhD focus on empirical and theoretical understandings of infrastructure from the viewpoint of smaller cities by considering the cases of Beira and Nampula, Mozambique.