Duke University Press Under Construction: Technologies of Development in Urban Ethiopia

Over the past decade, Ethiopia has had one of the world's fastest growing economies, largely due to its investments in infrastructure, and it is through building dams, roads, and other infrastructure that the Ethiopian state seeks to become a middle-income country by 2025. Yet most urban Ethiopians struggle to meet their daily needs and actively oppose a ruling party that they associate with corruption and mismanagement. In Under Construction Daniel Mains explores the intersection of development and governance by examining the conflicts surrounding the construction of specific infrastructural technologies: asphalt and cobblestone roads, motorcycle taxis, and hydroelectric dams. These projects serve as sites for nation building and the means for the state to assert its legitimacy. The construction process―as well as Ethiopians' experience of living with the disruption of construction zones―reveals the tension and conflict between the promise of progress and the possibility of failure. Mains demonstrates how infrastructures as both ethnographic sites and as a means of theorizing such concepts as progress, development, and the state offer a valuable contrast to accounts of African abjection and decline. Review "Offering a much-needed ethnographic investigation into the lives, livelihoods and labour relations that inhabit construction work in contemporary urban Africa, Under Construction contributes significantly to current debates and scholarship in urban studies, infrastructure, international development, and African Studies."--Pauline Destrée "Anthropological Notebooks" (12/31/2021 12:00:00 AM)"The book represents an important contribution to the field of infrastructure within anthropology and beyond. . . . Under Construction represents a seminal contribution to this field of study."--Felipe Fernandez "Anthropologica" (6/9/2021 12:00:00 AM)"Under Construction makes an important contribution not only to the field of the anthropology of development but also to urban development, at a time when many studies in Ethiopia have been placing more emphasis on rural communities. Daniel Mains, while basing his empirical evidence on the selected urban projects which appear to be perpetually under construction, shows that the process of construction has changed the relationship between citizens and the state, and not always for the better."--Gemechu Admassu Abeshu "African Studies Review" (11/10/2021 12:00:00 AM)"This study by Mains should be accepted with gratitude, and welcomed as a huge contribution to Ethiopian studies of urban development."--Fasika Gedif "African Studies Quarterly" (10/1/2020 12:00:00 AM)"Under Construction stages urgent interventions into development and governance, citizen and state, Afro-optimism and neoliberal pessimism in order to depict the complexities of infrastructure in Africa. Daniel Mains's work makes clear that the relationships between infrastructure, state, labor, and modernity are variable and contingent--sometimes smooth, often sticky and fraught--while making a compelling case for Ethiopia as a rich site for theoretical and ethnographic attention."--Charles Piot, author of "The Fixer: Visa Lottery Chronicles""Based on years of ethnographic research, Under Construction is a magnificent and thorough exposition that describes the ambivalence and hope invested in construction projects in Ethiopia. Construction, Daniel Mains demonstrates, is a vital location at which relationships between states and citizens are grounded. While they are powerful gatherings of technology and finance, construction projects are also precarious and full of danger. In exploring the tensions that are intrinsic to construction projects, Mains effortlessly brings together theorizations of historical materialism, vital materialism, and affect theory to produce a dazzling and clear account of how construction is incrementally and yet fundamentally transforming the political landscape of cities of t