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Instructors: Quoc-Tan Tran
Event type:
Intermediate seminar
Displayed in timetable as:
Anthropology of infrastructure: Materiality, relations and ecological thinking
Hours per week:
2
Credits:
5,0
Language of instruction:
English
Min. | Max. participants:
- | -
Comments/contents:
When we ask ourselves, ‘What is infrastructure?’ we often think of the material base or foundation upon which a collective body's action and activities operate. However, infrastructure studies scholars have demonstrated that these notions of a substrate or material base are insufficient to describe the invisible work that supports infrastructure's day-to-day operation. Leigh Star suggests that we should ask instead, ‘When is infrastructure?’ She uses the classic example of a household water system to illustrate how technical elements of the material base become invisible or hidden from our view. When we turn on the water, we see the water running, but we never see how things work beneath the surface. We have access to clean water and rely on it in our daily lives, but we are unaware of the complexity of networked systems that transport safe water to the tip of the tap. When the time comes, all that unseen work inside the network of pipes becomes the infrastructure itself. When the tap has minor hiccups, we know that something beneath it is not working properly.
This course introduces students to the fundamental concepts, theories, and approaches of infrastructure studies. We examine the complex relationship between everyday practices and everyday tools and technology through a pragmatist-ecological lens. Infrastructure is viewed as a continuous alignment of contexts. An ecological thinking can assist us in investigating emerging issues such as global connectivity, networked culture, media infrastructure, and the Internet of Things.
Literature:
Bowker, G. C. (2021). Life at the Femtosecond. In A. Volmar & K. Stine (Eds.), Media Infrastructures and the Politics of Digital Time: Essays on Hardwired Temporalities (pp. 125–142). Amsterdam University Press.
Edwards, P. N. (2017). Knowledge infrastructures for the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene Review, 4(1), 34–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053019616679854The
Larkin, B. (2013). The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42(1), 327-343. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522
Pinch, T. (2010). On making infrastructure visible: putting the non-humans to rights. Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34(1), 77–89. https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/bep044
Star, S. L., & Bowker, G. C. (2006). How to infrastructure. In L. A. Lievrouw & S. Livingstone (Eds.), Handbook of new media: Social shaping and consequences of ICTs (pp. 230–245). SAGE.
Module abbreviation:
56-105 (5 LP)
BA HF/NF: EKW (fsb13-14)- HF-M3, NF-M3, NF-M5, M11, SG, WB-Kultur;
MA: M7/WB-FV fachliche Vertiefung
56-105 (7 LP) mit MAP
BA HF/NF: EKW (fsb13-14)- HF-M3, NF-M3, HF-M5, NF-M5
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