Short abstract:

As oceans rise worldwide, many governments are intensifying infrastructural efforts to defend the towns and cities bordering them. This paper considers the politics of protective infrastructure in Japan, arguing that “safety infrastructures” can undermine social worlds and intensify other crises.

Long abstract:

As oceans rise worldwide, many governments are intensifying infrastructural efforts to defend the towns and cities bordering them. Such efforts depend on increasingly complex ways of modeling, anticipating, and speaking for future crises. In northeastern Japan, for example, the tsunami of 2011 prompted disaster scientists to revise how they modeled the potential frequency and characteristics of earthquakes and tsunamis. Some argued that their revised models demonstrated the need for new, more comprehensive infrastructures protecting people and property. They proposed a “total system” of protective infrastructure incorporating both structural and non-structural elements, dividing sea from society and managing the former’s ingress through complex systems of seawalls, dikes, and canals. However, residents argued that this system would intensify other crises, such as biodiversity loss and depopulation. Building on fieldwork with coastal residents, and comparative case studies, this paper considers the politics of protective infrastructure efforts in waterfront areas. By examining conflicts between scientists, officials implementing the system, and tsunami survivors, it explores a paradox at the heart of efforts to infrastructure coastal “edges”: how divisive “safety infrastructures” can undermine the very objects—social worlds—they claim to protect. It argues that such modernist attempts to “hold the line” against the sea—or fortify the line further—are ill-suited to a time when addressing the permacrisis requires breaking down the borders between humans and non-humans, both materially and conceptually.

Short abstract:

Energy transitions are imagined as a tool that could lead to security and peace and prevent war. We looked at the Israeli and Polish energy transitions through the lens of Reflexive Public Reason (Rudek, Huang,2023) to observe how issues of security, peace and war are constructed.

Long abstract:

Around the world, energy transitions can be seen as tools to address a range of issues, such as tackling climate change, limiting pollution and reducing energy prices, or decentralising energy, which could lead to energy democracy. In some places, energy transitions are also imagined as a tool that could lead to security and peace and prevent war. To observe how energy is imagined as a tool for security, peace and war prevention, we looked at the Israeli and Polish energy transitions. While the energy transitions in Poland and Israel appear to be imagined differently, we argue that the question of securitisation, as well as war and peace, is crucial in both countries.

We use the lens of Reflexive Public Reason (Rudek, Huang,2023) to observe how issues of security, peace and war are constructed. We show how socio-technical imaginaries of energy transitions in two countries shape perceptions of risk and uncertainty and thus co-produce energy transition pathways. Our work is based on three types of data: energy policy documents in two countries and funded energy research projects between 2019-2023, complemented by newspaper discourse analysis for the year 2023.

Short abstract:

The paper uses the US Supreme Court's Wayfair v. South Dakota decision, which allows local jurisdictions to collect sales tax from online retailers and marketplaces, to test theoretical concepts derived from actor-network theory and organizational studies regarding state crisis in the digital age.

Long abstract:

This paper merges actor-network, assemblage theory, and organizational studies to study the consequences of the United States Supreme Court’s (SCOTUS) Wayfair v. South Dakota (2018) decision. The decision upheld a South Dakota law requiring businesses located outside the state to collect South Dakota sales taxes for items sold through the internet. Following Wayfair, scores of states and local jurisdictions have adopted sales tax laws similar to South Dakota's. The resulting regulatory environment has been challenging for businesses, who find it difficult to determine the appropriate tax rate for different transactions and collect and remit the taxes on time. The Supreme Court assumed that its decision would result in jurisdictions standardizing procedures to facilitate sales tax collection. But this has not happened. Many jurisdictions have chosen to abide by their prevailing set of definitions and operations in the post-Wayfair world. The paper proposes to use Wayfair as a case study to investigate ideas concerning governance and state formation in the digital age. More specifically, it proposes to test the hypothesis that jurisdictions adopting strategies of what can be termed “expansive association” in legal and technological terms will report increased power, benefits, and satisfaction with taxation functions relative to jurisdictions adopting strategies of “conservative association”. To test this hypothesis, a study of sales tax collection in the state of Colorado (US) is described.

Short abstract:

In this paper we argue that risk translation practices are a crucial mechanism for resilient health care systems as they enact and value objects and infrastructures of governance. We explore this by analyzing Dutch healthcare governance during the COVID-19 pandemic through a multi-sited ethnography.

Long abstract:

In this paper we focus on risk translation in the governing of Dutch healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic. We do so to explore crisis resilience in healthcare governance as a concrete practice. We built in this paper on a multi-sited ethnography of the Dutch crisis-organization in healthcare between March 2020 and August 2022. We zoom-in on regional networks of acute care delivery (ROAZ) during the second year of the pandemic in the Netherlands (from August 2021 to August 2022). During this period our participants sought to learn from previous experiences during the first ‘waves’ of the pandemic and started to look forward to a post-pandemic situation.

Our analysis underscores how the COVID-19 pandemic in healthcare is enacted through a multitude of relations of risk. These relations are translated between layers of crisis-governance through relation-building, data-infrastructures, modelling and scenario-building, (re)writing guidelines and protocols next to formal political practices. We argue that risk translation during crises allows for creating time-spaces and infrastructures, enacting crucial objects of governance such as care (acute/’non-COVID’), geographies (‘the region’) and beds (‘an ICU-bed’). Risk translation appears as a crucial practice for resilient health care systems; showing the ad hoc, informal and manual risk work that mediates knowledge and values about how to act during crisis between layers of healthcare governance and emerging collective(s) (in) action. These practices are also inherently political, leading to the in- or exclusion of (alternative) concerns and their representatives in governing healthcare during crisis.

Short abstract:

The pandemic disrupted many health data infrastructures. Drawing on the case of France, we explore three kinds of trials (logistical, representational, enunciative) that had to be overcome daily for data to be fed ‘up’ to the central state administration, and gave rise to various forms of data care.

Long abstract:

The Covid-19 crisis disrupted epidemiological data infrastructures in numerous countries. These upheavals were first due to the uncertainties surrounding the nature of the virus and its modes of dissemination. They were accentuated by the WHO's demand for transparency, the widespread implementation of real-time monitoring, and unprecedented centralization efforts aimed at producing a state-centric vision of the pandemic.

Drawing on the case of French administration, this communication will explore the infrastructural transformations that unfolded behind the scenes of what has been described as a ‘data-driven pandemic’. Taking our inspiration from infrastructure studies and pragmatism, we will show that, in order for data to be fed ‘up’ to the central services, different kinds of trials had to be overcome through various modes of caring. We will detail three of them:

- logistics trials, that required on-the-spot adaptation or complete creation of complex instruments dedicated to the gathering and circulation of various data from different places,

- representational trials, which took the form of a shared concern regarding the ability of data to properly represent the reality of the pandemic, and translated into mundane and continuous forms of data care.

- enunciative trials, that arose when local authorities would communicate numbers that were not aligned with those available on government open data sets, and were notably overcome through initiatives explaining the ‘good organizational reasons’ for such misalignments.

Finally, we will discuss to what extent such care for data and their infrastructure persists once the crisis subsided. What has been learnt from these trials?

Short abstract:

The conceptual contribution discusses the concept of temporary infrastructure in crisis and transformation. Focussing on the effects of temporal boundary work it highlights how temporary infrastructure enables prefiguration, experimentation, exploration, mediation, construction and colonisation.

Long abstract:

The boom in infrastructure studies is accompanied by a critical questioning of the taken-for-grantedness of infrastructural entities. Maintenance, decay, and ruin have replaced the idea of eternal progress and permanent provision. But while critical scholars emphasised these forms of what might be called ontological and practical temporariness, there is still a lack of attention to explicitly planned temporary infrastructure – a type of infrastructure that has come to the fore during recent crises: the protest camps of the so-called Arab Spring, the front lines of the Russian war against Ukraine, or the pop-up bike lanes of the Covid19 pandemic are examples of this broader type of infrastructure that has accompanied human life forms for millennia.

In this paper I will argue that temporary infrastructure is deeply connected to processes of transformation and crisis. In both modes of socio-material change, the conditions of practice are constantly shifting, making long-term planning and anticipation difficult (Jürgen Link). Nevertheless, the normative openness and over-complexity of crisis (Gramsci) can also bring new forms of life to the fore. Recently, we have also witnessed how once permanent infrastructures such as fossil and nuclear power plants become temporary in planned processes of decommissioning.

The crucial feature that makes temporary infrastructure an important aspect of transformation is temporal boundary work that creates limited life spans that regulate the "form investments" of infrastructuring (Théveneut). The paper also presents a theoretical typology with empirical examples of practices of futuring with temporary infrastructure, including prefiguration, experimentation, exploration, mediation, construction and colonisation.

Short abstract:

Based on on-going research on very long-term storage infrastructures (LESLIE) related to five types of risks (nuclear waste, CO2 capture, seed banks, data storage and museum reserves), the presentation will question the role of these long-term infrastructures in a context of permacrisis.

Long abstract:

Western societies are characterized by a globalized economy and an increasingly rapid circulation of goods, services, and information. Paradoxically, we are simultaneously witnessing initiatives that, on the contrary, aim to immobilize certain goods - material and immaterial - for very long periods, while allowing them to be put back into circulation at any time, according to a principle of reversibility. These practices are a response to various risks now identified as major: loss of biodiversity, climate change, massive loss of digital data, loss of heritage artwork, storage of nuclear waste, etc.

This presentation is based on an on-going research on very long-term storage infrastructures (LESLIE) related to five types of risks (nuclear waste, CO2 capture, seed banks, data storage and museum reserves) and how they are endowed with qualities that allow both the conservation of what is sheltered and ensure, at all times, the conditions for their reuse. The analysis of these infrastructures should make it possible to bring to light the way in which societies project themselves into a secular (or even multi-century) future and how they set up institutional mechanisms allowing for their governance and maintenance in the very long term. Ironically, these infrastructures are, in their turn, subject to a changing and uncertain environment. Designed to shelter material and immaterial goods in the very long term, they are in turn subject to what they are supposed to protect against (climatic disasters, terrorist attacks, etc).

Short abstract:

The paper discusses the transformation processes of ports and their infrastructures into "smart" ones, using Hamburg and Marseille as case studies. These geographies and technopolitics are examined from a governmentality perspective and contextualized within current modes and moments of crisis.

Long abstract:

While the origins of the transformation of ports into "smart" ones can be traced back to the first terminal automatization in Rotterdam in 1993, it is only in recent years that these developments have increased both qualitatively and quantitatively. Under the label of "smartness," processes of digital transformation to increase economic growth, efficiency, and sustainability are being put into practice.

In my doctoral research and this paper, I examine the ports of Hamburg and Marseille and their ongoing discourses and practices of becoming "smart" from a governmentality perspective – as they are framed as highly relevant for several reasons. Firstly, they respond to discursively framed "urgent" challenges such as adapting to (geo-)political changes, global competition, moments of crisis, and climate change. Regarding the latter, the port spaces are also considered as testbeds for broader urban solutions. Secondly, they involve changing logistical practices related to the global circulation of commodities and data. Thirdly, they contribute to the reorganization and repositioning of port spaces, e.g., as sites for the production or import of green hydrogen.

The paper aims to provide concrete empirical insights into the technopolitics and geographies of digital infrastructures. Using qualitative ethnographic and discourse analytical methods, I examine information and telecommunication infrastructures (conceptualized as socio-technical, logistical, and urban networks) and their current transformations in smart port projects.

Short abstract:

The present study focuses on the Swedish civil defense infrastructure by exploring the materiality and affects of civil defense communication signals, those who manage and control crisis information processes, and the sociotechnical relations with the public.

Long abstract:

During times of crisis, the public depends on a functioning and trustworthy information infrastructure to be able to prepare themselves and get to safety. In Sweden, important messages to the public are distributed through radio, TV, and text messages, and during serious threats an outdoor warning siren can also be used. The outdoor warning system has been around since the 1930s and was initially built for emergency and flight alerts in case of war. In 1986 the system started being used for non-military threats such as gas leaks, toxic smoke, and extreme weather conditions. In recent years the warning system has been complemented with text messages that are distributed to mobile phones in affected areas.

Drawing from work on critical perspectives in crisis informatics and critical studies of media infrastructures, I analyze the Swedish civil defense infrastructure through three different cases: the maintenance and testing of the outdoor warning system in a municipality, the digital infrastructure of ‘important messages to the public’ at a government agency, and the distribution and public response of a national text message during the covid pandemic. This study explores ways of thinking about the materiality and affects of the civil defense communication signals, those who manage and control crisis information processes, and the sociotechnical relations with the public.

Short abstract:

This paper problematizes the present-day dominant paradigm of crisis response that seeks to de-escalate, triage, and transpose crises without addressing their root causes by excavating an alternative genealogy of vital infrastructures of mutual aid exemplified by gay switchboards.

Long abstract:

Crisis Text Line, the largest crisis text service in the United States, recently reported that nearly half (47.8%) of its texters identify as non-heterosexual. At the level of public discourse and lived reality, crises seem to have been conjoined with queerness, from the persisting trope of queer loneliness and estrangement, the health and political emergency of HIV/AIDS, to the media frenzy of youth mental health crises where LGBTQ+ teens are overrepresented. Hotlines such as the Trevor Project, in turn, have been posed as a technological “solution”. This talk offers a media genealogy of the present condition indicated by the Crisis Text Line report—the over-saturation of crises among queer, trans, and minority lives and the resort to the hotline as a sociotechnical redress—by returning to its analog incarnation, gay switchboards. The talk tells switchboards’ story through three interpretive frames: 1) a history of switchboard movements as distributed networks of information; 2) a biography of switchboard devices as mediated interfaces of encounter; and 3) a genealogy of switchboard work as vital infrastructures of survival. This talk points to a politics of crisis as a temporal form of vulnerability and a technopolitics of its uneven (re)distribution along lines of gender, sexuality, race, class, age, and location. Through the archive of gay switchboard, this talk attunes listeners to an acoustemology of the closet, an empirical inquiry into how the closet became known, problematized, and acted upon through voicing and listening and a conceptual heuristic of knowing-with and knowing-through the audible.