Keller Easterling’s Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space advances a profound reconceptualisation of contemporary urbanism by demonstrating that the dominant instruments of global power are no longer exclusively juridical or architectural, but increasingly infrastructural, procedural, and logistical. Rather than perceiving infrastructure merely as the neutral substrate of urban development, Easterling reframes it as an active medium of political organisation capable of scripting behaviours, regulating economies, and orchestrating spatial relations beyond conventional state authority. The book’s central argument revolves around the emergence of the zone—particularly the Special Economic Zone (SEZ)—as a replicable spatial technology through which governments and corporations negotiate flexible sovereignties, deregulated labour regimes, and accelerated capital circulation. Across examples ranging from Shenzhen and Dubai to Songdo and King Abdullah Economic City, Easterling illustrates how these enclaves function as laboratories of extrastatecraft, wherein infrastructural formulas become more powerful than explicit legislation itself. Particularly compelling is her observation that these spaces often masquerade as engines of innovation and cosmopolitan prosperity while simultaneously institutionalising precarious labour conditions, privatised governance, and fragmented citizenship. The discussion of Shenzhen’s transformation from manufacturing enclave into a vast metropolitan prototype exemplifies how infrastructural repetition evolves into planetary urban paradigms. Equally significant is Easterling’s insistence that infrastructure operates through latent organisational dispositions—standards, broadband networks, spatial products, and managerial protocols—that quietly shape geopolitical realities. Consequently, the text concludes that resistance to contemporary neoliberal urbanism cannot rely solely upon oppositional critique; instead, it necessitates tactical literacy in the hidden operational systems governing global space. In this sense, Easterling positions infrastructure not as passive background, but as the decisive political architecture of the twenty-first century.
Easterling, K. (2014) Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space. London: Verso.
