Colony, passageway, scenic spot: the mythological and material power of the road in southwestern China

Drawing on historical and scholarly accounts as well as contemporary fieldwork, this paper explores the mythological and material powers of roads in historical and contemporary processes of state-making in the frontier regions of Southwest China. Focusing on Guizhou Province, the paper argues that roads have been central to regional identity formation and that, as material infrastructures, roads have shaped historical processes of state formation in specific ways. It also argues that as state development priorities have shifted from industrialization to urbanism, roads have been transformed into urban spaces in which an entirely new regime of urbanization has overtaken the region.