Speaker
Description
The transition from fossil fuel-powered to electric mobility is widely discussed as a trajectory towards more sustainable transport infrastructures. Widely ignored in academia, this transition has occurred earlier, faster, and more profoundly in Bangladesh than in Europe or the US but under conditions almost diametrically opposed. Without any national policy to support it, the transition has been driven by the country’s informal economy. However, rather than being framed as a potential technology for “greening” public transport, electric rickshaws are subject to controversies, bans, and exclusion from policies for electric vehicles. This presentation explores the reasons behind the conflicts surrounding the proliferation of electric rickshaws. It shows how national-level policymakers and business elites mobilize imaginaries of sustainability against electric rickshaws and rely on strategies of “othering” them in (eco-)modernist narratives of social change. In these narratives history looms large, especially the country’s specific legacy of three-wheeled transport that contributes to the general framing of rickshaws as a “thing of the past”, standing for almost everything that the country wants to overcome on its modernization path – the unregulated, informal part of the economy; the congested cities; and the high number of road accidents. Based on the case study, the article points to open questions for the current decolonization agenda in global debates on sustainability transitions and infrastructure.
Biography
Jonas van der Straeten is Assistant Professor at the Technology, Innovation and Society Group at Eindhoven University of Technology. In his research, he studies processes of technological change in Africa and Asia from a systemic, transdisciplinary, and global perspective. His major areas of interest are electricity, housing, and – more recently – mobility. Jonas has a track record both as a historian of technology and as a consultant for projects on energy access in countries of the Global South. He has worked as postdoctoral researcher at the University of Technology Darmstadt in the project “A Global History of Technology, 1850 – 2000”, funded by the European Research Council. He holds a PhD from the Darmstadt University of Technology.
