The ‘decolonial wave’ that swept over the Global South in the mid-twentieth century left newly independent nations beached on the shores of a dreary Cold War world. New nations required 'nation-building': an amorphous set of interlocking projects concerned with new infrastructure, economic planning, and increased state oversight. Under the rubrics of development, new nation-states became the project and subject of the post-war social sciences. Modernisation theorists proliferated infrastructural and commercial experiments, turning new nations into testing grounds for their theories. The decolonizing world became the developing world; advocates of modernisation theories paved the way – often literally, with poured concrete – for both national prosperity and foreign exploitation.

This seminar invites brief proposals from scholars working on questions of infrastructure in the context of nation-building and world-making, in contexts outside of the North Atlantic world after 1800. Please submit an abstract (250 words max) a brief bio (50 words max) to Daniel Elam ([email protected]) by 30 September.