Argentina and the Spatial Politics of Extractive Infrastructures under US–China Tensions

MARCELO I. SAGUIER; MAXIMILIANO VILA SEOANE

The Rise of the Infrastructure State: How US - China Rivalry Shapes Politics and Place Worldwide

Bristol University Press

Año: 2022; p. 153 - 166

The notion of an “infrastructure state” refers to the ongoing trajectories of state-society-nature restructuring under contemporary globalizing capitalism driven by a competition to forge global interconnectivity through infrastructure integration. This chapter examines the influence of US-China geopolitical tensions in the political economy configurations of the energy and telecommunication sectors in Argentina. To do so we look at a series of leading infrastructure projects that have reconfigured these sectors in recent years or that promise to do so in the future. Two questions are posed. First, in what way do these infrastructure projects manifest geopolitical tensions between the US and China as well as the responses of the Argentinian state to such dynamics? Second, can these infrastructure projects be seen as contested socio-technical processes leading to the production of new forms of territoriality (rescaling of spatial-politics relations, transnational connectivity, etc.)?