Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space.

• Author: McKinnon, Malcolm
• Position: Book review

EXTRASTATECRAFT: The Power of Infrastructure Space

Author: Keller Easterling

Published by: Verso, London and New York, 2014, 252pp, A$39.99(pb).

In this book Easterling, a professor of architecture at Yale University and a writer on urbanism and globalisation, explores the operations of what she calls 'extrastatecraft'--'often undisclosed activities outside of, in addition to, and sometimes even in partnership with, statecraft'--in three 'infrastructure spaces'. The spaces are the free economic zones which operate 'under authorities independent from the domestic laws of [the] host country'; the global networks of broadband computing and mobile telephony, and the setting of international standards through the ISO, 'an extra-state parliament of ... global standard-making activity'.

In three chapters Easterling explores problematic forms of extrastatecraft in these spaces, including unregulated labour in export processing zones; price gouging by broadband providers in developing countries; and the asymmetry in international standards, which means that 'there is a meaningful legal mechanism to hold a company accountable for pirating a Madonna video, but not for contaminating the environment or using forced labour' (citing Judith Kimerling). In another two chapters Easterling examines both 'disposition', in particular the 'misalignment between the activity of an organisation and its stated intent', and 'stories' --the contrast between the upbeat stories that are told about infrastructure (nation-building, universal exchange) and the other stories that are not (a software programme or a planned city put to a different-to-expected use).

The last chapter explores and celebrates challenges to extrastatecraft. The Dutch non-governmental organisation Women on Water uses Dutch-registered ships to offer abortions in international waters to women in countries where abortion is illegal. 'Whether deploying cunning, banality or absurdity, infrastructure space is a tool of some of the most powerful forces in the world', Easterling concludes. 'But two can play at this game', she adds, 'in an art of extrastatecraft'.

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Easterling's work is stimulating but has limitations. First, even putting to one side subversive approaches like that of Women on Water, none of the three infrastructure spaces lack positive...