Technopolitics ‘from the ground’: Tracing ‘power’ grids and the expertise in Mekong geopolitics

Abstract

Technopolitics is a useful concept to investigate the strategic usage of technology, infrastructure, and expertise in (geo)political ordering. Scholars working on the Mekong region have linked it to hydropower dam expertise to understand (geo)political motivations of powerful states, agencies and decision-makers. Yet, few have examined technopolitics exercised by state engineers responsible for electricity transmissions after the ‘power’ production. By tracing ‘power’ grids in (post) Cold War Thai-Lao borderlands, this paper analyses how ‘less powerful’ states manipulated foreign expertise related to critical infrastructure. While tracing, it situates the analytical lens at the level of material and attends to ways in which technical and discursive features of grid extensions were maneuvered by actors ‘on the ground’ - engineers from expertise-recipient states. The paper reveals that Thai Cold War engineers manipulated West German expertise on grid interconnections and the U.S. geostrategic sphere of ‘power’ extensions to create and expand electric and economic ‘power’ circulations. It also demonstrates the spatio-temporal continuity of the technopolitical practice that shaped power relations between the Thai and Lao states. The paper advances conceptual linkages of technopolitics and geopolitics. Shifting attention to how foreign expertise is recast by less powerful states elicits a more nuanced view of geopolitics – one that incorporates their strategies and technopolitical ‘power’ dynamics evolving within and across their borderlands. In turn, this suggests the importance of re-contextualizing the ‘power’ flows of the U.S. and China in the Mekong. This approach of technopolitics ‘from the ground’ in Southeast Asia contributes to discussions of grounded theorizing of political economic geography.