Short Abstract

The panel examines everyday infrastructures through anthropological perspectives on their “everydayness” and via multiscalar, interdisciplinary approaches. It also considers infrastructures as sites where contemporary global polarisation unfolds, yet where transformations and connections may emerge.

Long Abstract

Everyday infrastructures—visible systems such as transport networks and energy grids, and hidden ones like digital networks or pipelines—deeply shape social life. Infrastructures often remain invisible until they break down, yet they are central to the reproduction of everyday life. The recent “infrastructural turn” in socio-cultural anthropology has broadened the concept to include less tangible forms such as care infrastructures or “people as infrastructure.” This panel asks: what constitutes an everyday infrastructure, and how is it planned, used, contested, or re-imagined?

We invite contributions that engage critically with the study of infrastructures through ethnographic, comparative, or interdisciplinary approaches. We particularly welcome reflections on innovative and mixed methods that make visible infrastructures embedded in ordinary routines, as well as research involving diverse actors—planners, financiers, builders, users, and those affected by infrastructural interventions.

Situating our discussion within the conference theme, we consider infrastructures as both shaping and shaped by processes of polarisation. Across the Global South, infrastructure projects often emerge within complex (geo)political negotiations involving states, foreign investors, and private firms. Competition among partners and shifting alliances reflect a world order in which infrastructures become sites where global tensions, political ambitions, and local aspirations intersect and collide. In the Global North, infrastructures act as a lens through which to observe spatial and social inequalities that leave portions of territories behind, in the name of a more declared public interest, albeit one driven by private interests. By foregrounding the material, social, and political dimensions of everyday infrastructures, this panel explores how anthropological engagement—bridging disciplines such as design, planning, and engineering—can offer an interdisciplinary and multiscalar lens for researching infrastructures. In doing so, we aim to understand how infrastructures not only reproduce social divisions but also hold potential for connection, collaboration, and transformation in an increasingly polarised world.

This Panel has 2 pending paper proposals.
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