SEPADPod - The Political Economy of Infrastructure, with Javier Guirado

Richardson Institute

On this episode, Simon speaks with Javier Guirado, PhD candidate at Georgia State University, a Visiting Doctoral Researcher at the Orient-Institut Beirut, and a SEPAD Fellow. His work explores the historically changing relation between society, urban space, and narratives of modernity in the Gulf. He is writing his dissertation about social movements and urbanization in Qatar during the Long Sixties. Javier is a the editor of a new report on the political economy of infrastructure in the Middle East which can be accessed here: https://www.sepad.org.uk/files/documents/infrastructure_sepad-compressed.pdf On this episode, Simon and Javier discuss the report at length, the importance of infrastructure and the need for an approach that focusses on the social components of infrastructural projects.