In this research project I will study the relationship between state-formation, natural resource extraction and the spatialization of different forms of governance by examining roads and road-building in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Roads are in many ways crucial for the state and governance, among other things, because state power is enacted through them and citizen evaluate the state according to the infrastructure and services it produces. I examine how PNG state officials, international consultants, extractive companies and rural people engage in state-formation through road development projects. I study how and in what different ways public and private road building creates state governance, how these actors influence the formation of governance through roads and what concrete effects roads have. In my research, I combine the study of infrastructures with the emergent research on the relationship between natural resource extraction and state formation.

2023

2027