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Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses the production of boundaries between collective provision and individual consumption. It does so by investigating two critical and contentious junctions: the home charging point of electric vehicles and the data-display of smart meters.

Paper long abstract:

This paper takes a distinctive approach to the task of analysing and understanding changing relations between supply and demand, between producers and consumers, and between the realms of state and market-based provision. It does so by investigating a selection of critical and contentious junctions or interfaces at which multiple interests and actors meet. The sites on which we focus - one being the plugging in of electric vehicles, the other being the design and positioning of smart metering systems - provide different but complementary insights into the ongoing 'making' of roles and categories around which infrastructures are organised. In taking this approach we show that such distinctions are reflected and also reproduced in the design and operation of material objects and networks around which infrastructures are formed. In most discussions of electricity supply and consumption there is a clear separation between questions that pertain to infrastructures typically managed by large organisations, and those that relate to the world of consumption, characterised by seemingly private choices made by millions of individual customers. The examples with which we work are unusual in that they represent instances in which the respective roles of consumer and provider are momentarily unsettled, uncertain and unclear. These blips allow us to 'see' the active production of boundaries that are commonly taken-for-granted. As such they provide relevant insights into how distinctions between collective provision and individual consumption are constructed.