Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to broaden the understanding of infrastructures as highly political socio-technical entities. Infrastructures are thought of as the materialization and enactment of multiple intertwined practices like envisioning, scaling and infrastructuring which have an effect on time and space.

Paper long abstract:

In the blueprint of the "National Development Plan (NDP) 2030 - Our future make it work" (National planning commission 2012) the South African government and the TNPA anticipate an improvement of port infrastructures in Durban's. In 2014 the South African Government additionally launched the project "Operation Phakisa - Oceans Economy" to fast-track the implementation of the NDP. The South African government anticipates a seven billion South African Rand investment in port infrastructures. These government plans articulate an envisioned future of a flourishing economic prosperity and a solution to the high unemployment rates in Durban. Nevertheless the communities of South Durban, subsistence fishermen and farmers contest these sociotechnical imaginaries by pointing out the (un)intended affects for human and non-human livelihoods in Durban.

By looking at the port of Durban and its infrastructures I want to take a closer look at one of the key nodes to the networks of the circulation of people, commodities, and ideas. Additionally, this paper how networks of circulation are intertwined in sociotechnical imaginaries and how these are continuously transformed in and over time and space? Drawing on empirical data this paper conceptualizes infrastructures as socio-technical entities which are materialized and enacted through multiple intertwined practices like envisioning, scaling and infrastructure which are thought of as enactments of regulations and standards.

Furthermore this paper will argue that infrastructures are, especially in post-apartheid South Africa, a material and racialised encapsulation of time which still is part of the sociotechnical imaginaries of black communities in Durban.