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- Convenors:
-
Rajiv Mishra
(Northwestern University in Qatar)
Anto Mohsin (Northwestern University in Qatar)
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- Format:
- Traditional Open Panel
Short Abstract:
Infrastructures hold promises but also create fractures. Once built, the potentials of infrastructures can produce the opposite of the intended effects or unexpected outcomes. We invite scholars to critically examine infrastructural imaginaries conceptually, analytically, and methodologically.
Long Abstract:
The human-built world abounds with infrastructures that dominate many aspects of human lives (Hughes 2024). Scholarly attention and interdisciplinary approach towards understanding the infrastructural realities form the productively emerging field of infrastructure studies (Edwards 2003, Larkin 2013). Beginning in earnest with Star’s seminar work (1999), there has been a proliferation of scholarly works investigating all aspects and types of infrastructures. One of the most important insights scholars have shared is that infrastructures are sociotechnical systems; they are constitutive of the social and technical aspects of our world. Steve J. Jackson et al. (2007) coined the phrase “infrastructural imagination” to point to “a way of thinking and acting in the world capable of moving between the separate registers of technical and social action.” The way political leaders, government bureaucrats, policy planners and technical experts imagine and shape the design and implementation of infrastructures, provides glimpses of infrastructural imagination (Mitchel, 2002). However, the infrastructural imagination often encounters ruptures and fractures on the ground. The encounters between top-down planning and development and everyday usage of infrastructures can produce unexpected outcomes and disconnected realities. Uncertainties of the environment can also produce unintended consequences. Additionally, infrastructures also require constant making and re-making, repairing, and maintaining to stand and hold to its imaginaries and promises (Henke and Sims, 2009; Anand et al. 2018). Building on the works of scholars who have examined the opportunities and limits of infrastructures and how certain schemes to improve the human condition failed (Scott, 1999), we would like to examine how infrastructures put in place in society do the opposite intended effect and even forbid the smooth functioning of society. We invite 250-word abstract submissions that explores the promises and fractures of the infrastructure imagination. We welcome papers that critically address the conceptual, analytical, and methodological dimensions of infrastructural imaginaries.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Govind Gopakumar (Concordia University)
Short abstract:
This paper utilizes imaginaries to examine the contested relation between transport infrastructures and urban futures in Bengaluru, India. Such an analysis is is necessary given the push in several southern cities to reign in motorization through infrastructure development.
Long abstract:
In the megacities of the global South, realizing aspirational transport futures have become synonymous with disrupting the growing automobile dependence there. A range of efforts have been trialed on the ground as part of the will to transition to a putative sustainable urban mobility. Zooming in on the city of Bengaluru, India, we conduct a qualitative inquiry into the fragmented visions of mobility that coalesce around three heterogenous infrastructure endeavours in the city – electrification of public transport, road redesign, and blocking through traffic. Presented as socio-technical imaginaries, we propose that the heterogenous endeavours rehearse multiple co-existing desired transport futures. This conceptualization is notable because it advances the burgeoning literature on socio-technical imaginaries in two novel directions. First, socio-technical imaginaries have been predominantly conceptualized at the national level, here we root the concept within the (Southern) urban context, and especially within the contestations and competitions accompanying the terrain. Second, building upon the literature on southern urbanism, we argue that socio-technical imaginaries of urban mobility do much more than realizing particular desirable transport futures, they constitute urban territories and through that the future cities. Thus, socio-technical imaginaries of transport infrastructures in the global south become a means for envisioning the yet-to-be realized city.
Marlotte de Jong (University of Michigan)
Short abstract:
This paper examines the fragility of water infrastructure to elucidate how cycles of breakdown and repair in water infrastructure create forms of physical and emotional labor disproportionately borne by rural women.
Long abstract:
One of the core tenants of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) #6 is the achievement of universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water for all by 2030. Per a United Nations’ progress report published in 2021, an estimate 2 billion people, 26% of the world’s population, still lacked access to safely managed drinking water services in 2020. In Kilifi County Kenya, the official narrative by county and national governments, development agencies, and the private water provider, Malindi Water and Sewerage Company (MAWASCO), claims that all residents have access to clean and safe drinking water. However, many residents counter the official narratives, saying they experience frequent water supply interruptions and often go months, and in some cases years, without access to clean and safe drinking water. Using household surveys, key informant interviews, and participant observations from 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Kilifi County, this research examines the fragility of water infrastructure to elucidate the gendered material, emotional and embodied experiences of water insecurity in rural and peri-urban coastal communities. Through the lens of infrastructural fragility, this research examines how cycles of breakdown and repair in water infrastructure create forms of physical and emotional labor disproportionately borne by rural women.
Anto Mohsin (Northwestern University in Qatar)
Short abstract:
This paper paints a portrait of electric maintainers and repairers. Based on fieldwork data collected in 2023, it reveals the paradoxical yet functional structure of this group of workers. Working within this structure they overcome challenges and figure out ways to keep motivated at their jobs.
Long abstract:
Infrastructures break down. They need to be continuously maintained, repaired, or retrofitted to ensure their promised functionalities and goals are kept. This paper examines the various ways that the Indonesian state through its state-owned power company maintains and repairs its electric infrastructure. The focus will be on the maintenance and repair of the transmission and distribution lines and substations. Based on six months of patchwork ethnography and interviews with more than a dozen electric maintainers in 2023, this study reveals a network of seemingly contradictory but highly functional maintenance workers. The labor structure is simultaneously hierarchical and egalitarian, gendered but also supportive of female employees, fragmented yet unified. This paper will also highlight the challenges that these maintainers face and the motivations they bring to the workplace to continue their work.
Olivia David (University of Michigan)
Short abstract:
This paper uses Detroit’s 2014 mass shutoff-for-nonpayment event – the largest residential water shutoff in US history – to examine how governments and publics differently and interactively understand and respond to such events, investigating the infrastructural politics that shutoffs illuminate.
Long abstract:
Drinking water service provision is a core function of government, exemplifying states’ use of infrastructures to construct and relate to constituencies. How and for whom water utilities (mal)function indicates the social and political values embedded in infrastructural systems. When water provision falls short, governments appeal to infrastructures’ technicality to shirk responsibility and depoliticize the social impacts of infrastructural failures. This paper uses Detroit’s 2014 mass shutoff-for-nonpayment event – the largest residential water shutoff in US history – to examine how governments and publics differently and interactively understand and respond to such events. Previous studies of water shutoffs and inequality highlight implications for water security, public health, and psychosocial wellbeing. I add to this work by investigating the infrastructural politics that shutoffs illuminate: how physical water infrastructures hold sociopolitical roles and meanings, which shutoffs – an experience of "infrastructural exclusion" – reveal. Through this prism of infrastructural politics, I use historical document and media analysis to scope the history of drinking water politics in Detroit, understand key points of contention in the debate, and characterize the arguments of government and resident-activist actors. I identify key themes of controversy that emerge as resident-activists (re)politicize shutoffs, while government depoliticizes and “technocratizes” them using anti-poor fiscal rationalities. This paper draws on STS, environmental justice, water policy, and urban politics work. In so doing, I use the “infrastructural imaginaries” concept to advance interdisciplinary scholarship, and demonstrate its utility for policy analysis and advocacy toward constructing more equitable water provision systems in Detroit and beyond.
Wenjing Qiu (Leiden University)
Short abstract:
This article examines the local hope and despair about infrastructural development, with a keen interest on the local sense of infrastructural time. Based on a four-month fieldwork in a village in Southeastern China, the research proposes the analytical possibility of the concept "anti-promise".
Long abstract:
Infrastructures can mean the promise of development but in reality they can otherwise become a source of anti-promise. The concept of "anti-promise" has two-fold meaning in my research on a small village amidst economic booming of Southeastern China, which is based on a four-month ethnographic fieldwork about large-scale infrastructures including waste incineration plant and high-voltage electrical station charging nearby high-speed train station. First, the construction of infrastructures technically impact environment, disrupt livelihood and impede economic development. Second, villagers experience a shift of feeling from hope to despair, from progress to stagnation. The sense of stagnation is in the meantime a sense of temporal compression. In other words, villagers find themselves stuck in the middle of an aging and economically backward village, but also right dwelling in a shadowy area adjacent to other developing villages and in the larger city benefiting from the infrastructures. The contrast of progress and stagnation or temporal compression creates a stronger déjà-vu feeling of stagnant development. Villagers bittersweetly celebrate the state development. The more they look forward to the opportunities of project, investment and social welfare, the more they are disappointed about the local government, jealous of wealthier others and enduring an internal divergence due to different economic status. The anti-promise of infrastructural development further exacerbates social inequality by unevenly distributing social benefits and fracturing social relationships within rural community. The research proposes the analytical possibility of "anti-promise" to unravel the shadow of development by examining the local perceptions of infrastructural time imposed by government initiatives.
Miao Lu (Lingnan University, Hong Kong)
Short abstract:
This study aims to explore the different types of infrastructural imagination and techno-politics in the process of bringing last mile internet connections to rural Africa by focusing on two prominent projects —Huawei’s base station project “RuralStar” and Google’s internet balloon project “Loon”.
Long abstract:
Due to the lack of last-mile network infrastructure, rural Africa has been one of the least connected areas in the world. In recent years, multiple attempts have been made to connect rural Africa through various internet connectivity solutions, including balloons (Google’s Project Loon), drones (Facebook Aquila), and rural base stations (Huawei’s RuralStar). Designed by different tech companies, these infrastructure projects vary in terms of their scale, discourse, technical solution, and source of capital (Western, Chinese, and/or Africa), generating both failures and successes. When Google and Facebook shut down their last mile projects in the sky after several years, Huawei’s RuralStar— a lightweight base station solution — had been commercially used in more than 110 countries, mostly in Africa.
The proposed study aims to explore the different types of infrastructural imagination and techno-politics in the process of connecting rural Africa. Specifically, I focus on two prominent projects that have (once) been deployed on a large scale in rural Africa—Huawei’s base station project “RuralStar” and Google’s internet balloon project “Loon”.
Based on interviews, document analysis, and field trips to three African countries—Ghana, Togo, and Cote d'Ivoire, this study will (1) map the actor-networks around the infrastructure design and deployment, (2) analyze the narratives and socio-technical imaginations from diverse actors, and (3) theorize the different approaches of connecting rural Africa through last-mile infrastructure projects, paying attention to their promises as well as failures and contradictions. This study will contribute to the interdisciplinary area of STS, infrastructure studies, and critical media studies.
José Gómez (Universidad de Cuenca)
Short abstract:
The paper investigates "Yachay, the City of Knowledge" in Ecuador, focusing on its aim for technological progress and nation-building. It explores the projects unravelling, and ties it to historical inequalities, emphasizing the significance of temporal analysis for infrastructural projects.
Long abstract:
This paper explores the case of “Yachay, the City of Knowledge” in light of the making and the unmaking of a national narrative of technological prowess, nation-state building, and revolution for Ecuador through this infrastructural project. The paper explores the project´s initial design and its implementation process and its unmaking, investigating the dynamics of the project through diverse socio-technical relations, times, and settings. It focuses on the period during the material implementation of some of its fundamental physical infrastructure (2011-2016). Starting with the selection of the site for the development of the project, I explore the narrative and practices that projected Yachay as Ecuador´s path into a ‘brighter future’ that justified the expropriation of 4462 hectares of land to build the new city. The narrative subsequently moves to the processes of repair and maintenance conducted in the buildings of the old Hacienda on the base of which the university at the heart of the project would operate.
The paper explores the long-lasting historical inequalities regarding land accumulation, ownership, and decay in the region to which Yachay became coupled, as well as the expectations that materialized symbolically and physically in the infrastructures emerging from the repair processes. In short, the onus of the analysis lays in making visible the temporal complexity that characterized the infrastructuring processes while arguing why it is academically sound and socially coherent to study pasts and futures in tandem when analysing innovation projects, particularly in regions of the world intensely marked by deep historical injustices.
Eileen Jahn (University of Bayreuth)
Short abstract:
Examining residents' experiences with formal electrification, this presentation analyzes promises, fractures, and social rewiring. Improved safety, security, and economic opportunities contrast with challenges like cable theft and socio-economic disparities between tenants and main households.
Long abstract:
The electrification of informal settlements, such as Slovo Park in Johannesburg, South Africa, represents a pivotal moment in infrastructural development and socio-political dynamics. Rooted in apartheid-era segregation and subsequent promises of post-apartheid liberation, electricity emerges as a symbol of social inclusion and dignity. However, electrification initiatives reveal a complex tapestry of promises and fractures impacting residents.
This presentation sheds light on the multifaceted dimensions of formal electrification in Slovo Park. Extended electricity access improves safety, security, and economic opportunities, while street lighting fosters community well-being. Yet, the installation of formalized electricity introduces new challenges and unintended tensions within the settlement. Rising incidents of cable theft and the proliferation of spaza shops contribute to heightened security concerns and increased costs of living. Socio-economic disparities between main households and tenants exacerbate existing inequalities, as electricity becomes a bargaining chip for rent payments and control over resources.
Examining residents' lived experiences and socio-political implications, this presentation critically analyzes infrastructural imaginaries and materialities in Slovo Park. It highlights the nuanced interplay between development promises, unintended exclusion fractures, and, ultimately, the rewiring of social circuits.
Jialing Luo (Sichuan University)
Short abstract:
The research examines the transformative effects of infrastructure development on the outskirts of a Chinese metropolis. It explores the disjunction between the promises and realities of infrastructure in terms of “infrastructural imagination” and a high-modernist vision of development.
Long abstract:
Wangcun was a peri-urban village located to the east of Chengdu, the metropolis of western China. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Wangcun was demolished to make way for the construction of two mega-projects: the 3rd Ring Road of a complex intra-city transportation system and the Chengdu East Railway Station, a crucial node in the nationwide high-speed rail network. Behind the state-led infrastructure development is a broader picture of China’s planned urbanisation as an engine for continued economic growth and modernisation. Consequently, Wangcun and its neighbouring villages were transformed into urban neighbourhoods within a very short time span. The former villagers of Wangcun were resettled into a newly-built residential compound on the old site. While they now enjoy improved living conditions, some of the new urbanites face challenges. Having previously relied on agricultural land, they lack the education, skills, and experience necessary for urban employment. Additionally, local mobility poses inconvenience, as their compound is sandwiched between the two parallel mega-projects - designed primarily for automobile and train travelers, rather than pedestrians and cyclists. The promise of infrastructure (cf. Appel, Anand & Gupta 2018; Harvey & Knox 2012) does not seem to bring better opportunities as locals anticipated. Rather, potential tensions between the goals of national advantage and those of local community appear to emerge. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork, this research critically engages with theories of “infrastructural imagination” (Jackson et al. 2007) and a high-modernist vision of development (Scott 1998).
Laure Dobigny (Catholic University of Lille)
Short abstract:
Based on an empirical study of four smart university buildings in Lille (France), this paper will examine the promises and failures of the smart infrastructures and imaginaries - or how can users be both distanced and involved?
Long abstract:
Smart technologies such as smart grids and smart buildings, are presented as responses to social and environmental challenges. The aim is to meet the (presumed) aspirations and (standardised) comfort of users, while at the same time responding to strong environmental requirements, whether in terms of energy saving, resource conservation, biodiversity, etc. However, smart technologies are based on an ever-greater distance (technical, operational and symbolic) between the user and the technical infrastructure: the user cannot and must not interfere with the technologies, to ensure their smooth operation and efficiency. Paradoxically, in the « smart » imaginaries, the users are surrounded by technology, and at the same time isolated from it (Reigeluth, 2023). Their environment are invaded by technologies that generate and analyze data, but over which they have no possible means of action, as these are automated and managed by a control center. At the same time, the “smart user” is asked to adapt their practices to the building or to the grid, in order to reach energy saving. How this process of making technical systems invisible and inaccessible could be compatible with the objective of reducing consumption, which requires, on the contrary, making visible the energy used by the physical and sensitive apprehension of technologies, the understanding of the technical system and thus, its appropriation? Based on an empirical study of four smart university buildings in Lille, France (ongoing INCLUNIV research project), this paper will examine the promises and failures of the smart infrastructures and imaginaries.