A Mysterious Lack of Geopolitical Struggle: Transportation Logistics and the Geopolitics of Information in South America

• In Event: Local and Regional Information, Infrastructure, Ideologies, and Ideas

Abstract

Since the 2008 financial crisis, the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) has pursued regional infrastructure integration to facilitate the extractivist, neo-developmentalist policies of its integrants. This includes a regional fiber optic ring designed to lower the end-user costs of connectivity and reduce dependence on American data infrastructure, leading commentators to suggest growing regional geopolitical autonomy. But improved connectivity is also fundamental to the modernization of transportation logistics. In economies based on primary production and extraction, informationalization of commodity chains facilitates capitalist insertion, and therefore ought to constitute a significant nexus of informational geopolitical struggle. However there is a notable absence of concern about these issues in South America. This paper contemplates this lack of attention, and then considers what it means for how we should think about the geopolitics of information.

Author

• Katherine Margaret Anne Reilly, School of Communication, Simon Fraser University