An experiment with the minor geographies of major cities: Infrastructural relations among the fragments

Abstract

Research on urban water infrastructures has seldom reached across the Global North-South divide owing to their apparent developmental incommensurability. Yet, the universalising tendencies of urban theory has meant that cities of the Global South are often deemed to have ‘fragmented’ infrastructures or incomplete circulations in implicit comparison to the northern infrastructural ideal. So, in order to truly ‘world’ the study of infrastructures and cities, it is important to go beyond these dominant paradigms and attend to how infrastructures actually work and what socio-technical implications they have in cities of the Global South and North. Building on these provocations, this paper places the water infrastructures of two ‘most different cities’– Chennai, India and London, UK – alongside each other in ‘experimental comparison’, where the aim is not to arrive at paradigmatic urban theory but to highlight heterogeneity and excavate themes for further critical thinking on each case. This paper will delineate the dialogic and reflexive method of research and analysis adopted, tracing how it led to the practice of ‘minor theory’, which focuses on processes that do not find expression in dominant universalising analyses. Here, minor theory is mobilised towards challenging dominant or major constructs about each city and across cities, while amplifying urban multiplicities and enabling a deeper engagement with infrastructure making in the Global South and North, thus expanding urban studies’ toolbox of critical thinking.

Los estudios comparativos en el campo de la investigación urbana

“…Con respecto a los servicios urbanos, pueden mencionarse casos de estudio sobre la política y gestión del agua (Tiburcio y Perevochtchikova, 2012), la gestión y acceso a las áreas verdes (Baycan-Levent y Nijkamp, 2009), y las condiciones de la infraestructura de saneamiento (Lancione y McFarlane, 2016). El énfasis en el papel de la infraestructura incorpora una consideración de las consecuencias de las condiciones materiales de la vida cotidiana, y ha influido de manera muy significativa en análisis comparativos entre ciudades (McFarlane et al, 2017;Niranjana, 2022). Este énfasis en las infraestructuras ha dado paso a estudios que se relacionan con otros ejes y abarcan tanto la construcción y gestión infraestructural, como la experiencia cotidiana de habitar las ciudades, dentro de los cuales el cambio climático se vuelve relevante.…”

On Urban Photography: Infrastructure in a Minor Key

“…It takes urban worlds in a direction different to those dictated by an established canon (Deleuze and Guattari 1986a). And it is these variations that make the minor political, for it indexes other ways of negotiating access to infrastructure (Barua 2023; for minor accounts of cities, also see: Sundaram 2010, Niranjana 2022.…”

Knowledge infrastructures for just urban futures : a case of water governance in Lima, Peru

“…Within urban geography, this turn towards a relational ontology has resulted in an increased interest in the socio-materiality of the city and an expanding body of scholarly work providing rich analysis of the social and political nature of infrastructure (e.g., Criqui, 2020;Loftus, 2007;Luque-Ayala & Marvin, 2015;Niranjana, 2022). In this strand of urban research, infrastructure forms the support, or the essential fundament, for urban practice (Milan & Treré, 2019).…”

“…As illustrated through the juxtapositions between the water producer and the differentiated water consumers, 'expert-amateurs' and 'smart citizens,' and the rural and urban knowledge systems, the diverse everyday practices of infrastructuring do not easily lend themselves to generalisations. Comparing and contrasting different points of view on the water and knowledge infrastructure, placing knowledge systems side-by-side, and researching the city across geographies are useful because it helps understand the diverse situated experiences within the city (Niranjana, 2022). This thesis has put forward the argument that to support just urban water governance, knowledge infrastructures should centre the knowledge and experiences of residents and foster plurality and self-determination in data practices.…”

“…The empirical findings of the process of datafication in a city in the Global South are highly relevant for present-day core theoretical debates in urban studies, which have for a long time built their theories from insights from North-Atlantic cities. The set-up of this thesis, being multi-scalar and covering privileged and marginalised communities, allowed for thinking about the city from the inside as well as elsewhere -the Andes, José Carlos Mariátegui -and grappling with urban heterogeneity (Niranjana, 2022). Therefore, as a case study, it contributes to the diversity of cases discussed in the literature on smart urbanism and gives insight into the many different expressions and experiences of becoming 'smart' within one city.…”