Projects of transition

Abstract

This paper develops an analysis of the politics and temporality of infrastructure through a focus on the idea of a project. A project (noun) is an assemblage of expertise, labour, materials and resources. The development of a project to build a port, pipeline, a mine, or a hydropower plant entails the mobilization of ideas, finance, political support and the law, the containment of material forces, as well as the organization of expertise, resources and labour. To project is also a verb; to throw forwards or to imagine, visualize or speculate on a possible future, which may or may not be actualized in practice. Moreover, individual infrastructural projects are often built on the legacy of earlier projects and conceived as contributions to ambitious projections of the future–including modernization, socialism, development and state building. Our analysis of the politics and temporality of projects is both developed and illustrated through an account of infrastructural projects in the Republic of Georgia which are also understood as contributions to a larger project of transition.