Paper short abstract:

This talk discusses a novel methodology for studying infrastructures via on-the-ground materialities. We propose that archives of material, textual objects be introduced into the study of infrastructures in order to collect, order, and analyse social and cultural productions of building projects.

Paper long abstract:

This talk discusses a novel methodology for studying infrastructures via local, on-the-ground material artefacts. Following on the work of Barry (2013), which enlists an analysis of official public industry documents to reveal their performative and institutional politics, we propose that an innovative archive of material and textual objects be introduced into the study of infrastructures in order to collect, order, and analyse the social, cultural and material production of specific building projects. As pertains to humanities scholarship traditionally speaking, archives have typically been state-run institutions holding historical, political, economic and social records from across various arms of governance and societal order. This method proposes to establish and work with a novel archive of the contemporary, a living and breathing collection of documents, stories, reports, notices, banners, photographs, posted bills and rumours - anything textual (in the term's broadest sense) that represents a writing and a reading by contemporary society of the social worlds created and mediated by infrastructure. This consists of both formal/official and local/vernacular material production, so as to show the multiple discourses and representations implicit in infrastructural processes. In this sense, the archive is an epistemic assemblage that can be understood in three ways: a) an amalgamation of projective and managerial devices; b) a testament to calls for accountability and transparency made by local and international investors, municipalities, financial institutions and civil society organisations (Barry 2013); and c) a space for the reflection on infrastructure's quotidian nature: the lived experience of their planning, construction and maintenance.