Original citation:Hall, Suzanne M., King, Julia and Finlay, Robin (2016)
AbstractInfrastructure convenes social relations, thereby revealing how city dwellers access shared resources in the context of growing inequality. Our exploration of migrant infrastructure engages with how highly variegated migrant groups develop a 'transaction economy' (Simone, 2004) within marginalised city streets, exchanging goods and services, and information and care. In the context of ethnically diverse and deprived urban places, where state resources are increasingly diminished, we explore how a precarious yet skilled resourcefulness emerges through the street. Our empirical exploration of migrant infrastructure is located on Rookery Road in Birmingham and on Narborough Road in Leicester, and draws on qualitative surveys with 195 selfemployed proprietors from many countries of origin. The streets reveal transaction economies that intersect local and migratory resources, eluding the categorisation of cities associated with either a global North or a global South. Further, the lively nature of street transactions decentres western-centric measures of economic value. From the street, we develop a postcolonial analysis of infrastructure that relates properties of historic depth (power), socio-spatial texture (materiality) and locality (place).
Ethiopia’s mass-scale subsidized housing delivery programme has driven the rapid expansion of middle-income, mid-rise settlements on the outskirts of Addis Ababa, requiring the provision of infrastructure to newly developed areas. In the case of the Kotari housing project, established sanitation systems were deemed inappropriate for the site, resulting in the deployment of novel technology, a Membrane Bioreactor (MBR). Such decentralised technologies contribute to the heterogenous infrastructure configurations which characterise Addis Ababa’s sanitation landscape, reflected not only in material configurations but also in how they are governed. In this paper, we use the concept of ‘infrastructure interfaces’ as an analytical device to identify the key material connection points in the system. Working across scales, we scrutinise the governance arrangements at these critical junctures: the household, the block, the condominium, and the city. Our analysis challenges established understandings of infrastructural heterogeneity driven by the private sector, either through financialized elite infrastructures or informal survivalist practices. In Kotari, the state is the driver and the target is the lower middle class. Centring the state in these infrastructure configurations provides nuance to our understanding of how heterogeneity emerges. Our methodological approach accounts for governance at various scales, providing fresh insights into the relationality of infrastructure, particularly the human/technology interface and infrastructural failures. The case shows the importance of transcending binary readings of infrastructure configurations, such as on/off grid, state/private and formal/informal. Future work on the post-network city must go beyond simply denigrating or valorising alternative modes of service delivery.
As the adage goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Yet, anthropologists have not typically sought study‐participant drawings. Using a protocol in which a request for a drawing was embedded, this study captures the internal dynamics of three successful university‐based teams. Our questions followed a specific Describe–Draw–Explain sequence. All interviewees offered some novel element in their drawings (Draw step) beyond what they conveyed in their verbal descriptions (Describe step), while 85 percent of them again offered additional detail in the Explain step. The data also revealed stark and surprising cultural contrasts across teams, including one that was understood best as a network that could be activated upon demand. Gathering drawings is a fast yet valid and reliable method when the prescribed sequence of questions is followed. Another virtue of this approach is that the interviews can be conducted virtually, essential during the COVID‐19 era.
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