Infrastructural Attachments is a carefully crafted study that combines archival research and ethnography. The author, Emma Park, puts forward a non-technological examination of public austerity measures and how these are associated with the outsourcing of state functions to non-state entities. Her research connects with the literature on African knowledge-workers and their practised labour supporting the day-to-day maintenance of African modernity.

The book consists of an introduction, six main chapters and an epilogue. The time period runs from the nineteenth century, when East Africa came under British imperial rule, to the present day. As Park argues, economic austerity has been part and parcel of African governance ever since colonial occupation. Reproduced fiscally and infrastructurally, austerity continues to resonate with Kenya's state and entrepreneurial elites. Park provides critical insights into the deeply fractured foundations of African state-building. A key concept in the book is ‘infrastructural attachment’. Park uses it to describe how institutions and people are connected to networks, markets, ideologies and many other things. To illustrate, Park analyzes road transport, radio broadcasting and telecommunication, in all of which the involvement of Kenyans has been crucial.

Chapter 1 looks at the Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEA), which built roads serving a developmentalist ethos in Kenya. IBEA was more than a profitmaking enterprise; it was at the heart of a colonial revenue generating regime. As an ‘infrastructural prosthetic’ (2), the IBEA acted like the state and exercised governmental powers. Negotiations went back and forth between the British, the Sultan of Zanzibar, local leaders and African workmen. Chapter 2 recounts IBEA's struggle to employ Kenyans in road construction and to tax them for (future) road development. Implementing ‘novel regimes of seizure’ (63), IBEA even imposed its own currency. In the newly established wage-labour economy, the British administrators depended heavily on native labourers, but the former would regularly usurp, occlude or ignore the latter's expertise.

Chapters 3 and 4 describe radio broadcasting as the colonial state's information arm. Similar to roads, the radio network was originally designed to ‘civilise’ Kenyans and propagandise white ideals. Here also, the broadcasting network had to polyphonically navigate cultures and tastes with the help of versatile African knowledge-workers. The radio remained in the public realm through times of war, revolution and imperial dissolution. It was an essential infrastructure of connection that the state wanted to bind people to. Even as the radio was publicly run, the directors had to make sure they adjusted the contents, hours and hosting of the programmes so as to satisfy an African audience. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with the telecommunication giant Safaricom in the early 2010s. The state is a major shareholder in Safaricom, the country's largest single taxpayer. Numerous ordinary Kenyans are attached to it as small shareholders. Park explains how Safaricom reaps profits under conditions of austerity by tying citizens to state-corporate initiatives.

Park considers all facets of attachment and uses a consistent set of non-technical vocabulary. She explains Kenyans’ motivations to live within the confines of foreign-designed facilities. Contemporary history testifies to how Kenyans have resourcefully navigated complex parastatal relations. People are mobilised and they are mobilisers. Park is emphatic about ordinary people's participation. They are the ones who master linguistic and conceptual keys to unlock the power of Kenyan infrastructures. What is fascinating is the way citizens make claims on the state as a result. In other words, people assert belonging to a city and utilisation of its utilities for having been involved in the construction.

The first half of the book is theoretically denser than the second half, while the text's anthropological qualities are more apparent towards the very end. One point the author might address in future research is the renewal of infrastructural attachments across generations. It would also be interesting to evaluate the emotional, affectual dimensions of austere labour regimes. This could lead to a lively debate about the poetics of infrastructures and the aesthetics of politics.

Overall, Infrastructural Attachments is a welcome addition to research on colonial and post-colonial Africa. Given the book's conceptual innovations and extensive temporal scope, it will especially appeal to those who study Kenyan history, politics and anthropology.