Paradoxical Infrastructures

Abstract

In recent years, a dramatic increase in the study of infrastructure has occurred in the social sciences and humanities, following upon foundational work in the physical sciences, architecture, planning, information science, [End Page 1] and engineering. This article, authored by a multidisciplinary group of scholars, probes the generative potential of infrastructure at this historical juncture. Accounting for the conceptual and material capacities of infrastructure, the article argues for the importance of paradox in understanding infrastructure. Thematically the article is organized around three key points that speak to the study of infrastructure: ruin, retrofit, and risk. The first paradox of infrastructure, ruin, suggests that even as infrastructure is generative, it degenerates. A second paradox is found in retrofit, an apparent ontological oxymoron that attempts to bridge temporality from the present to the future and yet ultimately reveals that infrastructural solidity, in material and symbolic terms, is more apparent than actual. Finally, a third paradox of infrastructure, risk, demonstrates that while a key purpose of infrastructure is to mitigate risk, it also involves new risks as it comes to fruition. The article concludes with a series of suggestions and provocations to view the study of infrastructure in more contingent and paradoxical forms.

Dreaming partnership, enabling inequality: administrative infrastructure in global health science

“…Risk management is one of the hallmarks of infrastructure, but as Howe et al . (2015) point out, infrastructures also paradoxically generate new risks. Often infrastructures that benefit some are harmful to others ( ibid .).…”

Theorising suburban infrastructure: a framework for critical and comparative analysis

“…While usually understood as the key material, technological and now digital assets of cities, infrastructure is also utilised as a frame to examine the myriad social arrangements that condition the capacities of people in place: from the economic and regulatory regimes of global infrastructure finance (Siemiatycki 2013; Torrance 2008) to informal everyday rituals and ideological imaginaries (Amin 2014;Chattopadhyay 2012;Dourish and Bell 2007;Simone 2004). The extended definitional capacity of such technical (hard) and social (soft) infrastructures has spurred innovative investigations into the networked nature of contemporary urbanism, but it has also opened the risk of theoretical overextension and misuse (Howe et al 2015). Graham and McFarlane, ruminating on the questions posed in the epigraph, observe that in the absence of a versatile comparative theory of urban infrastructure there is 'a tendency for infrastructure studies to focus on particular infrastructures.…”

The intersections between infrastructures and expectations: repair and breakdown in Yachay, the city of knowledge in Ecuador

“…This moment of expropriation and, more importantly, what came after it with the construction of the physical infrastructure, illustrate the paradoxical nature of infrastructures (Howe et al 2015) and their relationship with timescapes (Joniak-lüthi 2017). For example, the decisions taken in the present during this early stage of implementation shaped multiple relationships with the future.…”

“…Furthermore, they have also pointed towards the constant danger of breakdown that can often end in disrepair/decay of infrastructures, illustrating their contingency within challenging political and economic settings (Jensen and Morita 2015;Schwenkel 2015). Processes of maintenance/repair, breakdown/disrepair constitute particularly strong empirical and analytical observational points to develop an integral understanding of the complicated dynamics of infrastructures which at times become visible or evident only "upon breakdown" (Furlong 2014;Graham 2010;Howe et al 2015;Pipek and Wulf 2009) and the order of which is always vulnerable and contingent.…”