STS beyond the “modern infrastructure ideal”: Extending theory by engaging with infrastructure challenges in the South

Furlong, Kathryn

doi:10.1016/j.techsoc.2014.04.001

Cited by 170 publications

(137 citation statements)

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“…In this case, understanding the urban geography of electricity In both cases, STT usefully demonstrated links between technology and its social context, including crucially the politics of infrastructure operation and transformation. Yet two key limitations which challenge its application across postcolonial urban worlds became evident: the assumption of a universal (and formalized) infrastructure system (FURLONG 2014;VARLEY, 2013) and the largely apolitical approach, including the assumption of a benevolent state with which actors can cooperatively engage towards more sustainable, just transitions, particular in sociotechnical transition theory (LAWHON and MURPHY, 2012).…”

Section: Unlearning Infrastructure: Identifying Assumptions To Make Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unlearning (Un)Located Ideas in the Provincialization of Urban Theory

et al. 2016

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Abstract:Postcolonial urbanists have argued that theorizing is never unlocated, and requires socio-spatial contextualization to understand its utility and limits. Articulating the always partial process of 'learning to unlearn' theoretical assumptions and normativities, and considering what lies outside theory, can contribute to postcolonial urban theory. Sharing this process can help scholars 'learn to unlearn' from each other, develop modes of urban theorizing which acknowledge the situatedness of that process more robustly, and increase transparency about the process of theorization. Further, it shifts the focus from the 'who' and 'where' of theorization towards the assumptions and norms implicit in theory. After reflecting on our scholarly engagements, we point to situatedness, partiality, specificity, and scale as useful entry points for scholars seeking develop urban theory from the South. Unlearning [un]located ideas in the provincialization of urban theoryAbstract: Postcolonial urbanists have argued that theorizing is never unlocated, and requires socio-spatial contextualization to understand its utility and limits. Articulating the always partial process of 'learning to unlearn' theoretical assumptions and normativities, and considering what lies outside theory, can contribute to postcolonial urban theory. Sharing this process can help scholars 'learn to unlearn' from each other, develop modes of urban theorizing which acknowledge the situatedness of that process more robustly, and increase transparency about the process of theorization. Further, it shifts the focus from the 'who' and 'where' of theorization towards the assumptions and norms implicit in theory. After reflecting on our scholarly engagements, we point to situatedness, partiality, specificity, and scale as useful entry points for scholars seeking develop urban theory from the South.

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Section: Unlearning Infrastructure: Identifying Assumptions To Make Tmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unlearning (Un)Located Ideas in the Provincialization of Urban Theory

et al. 2016

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“…Finally, this project engages with the broad work in the politics of infrastructure (see e.g. Graham and Marvin, ; Holston, ; Truelove, ; Carse, ; Furlong, ; Silver, ; Barnes, ; Anand, ) through a consideration of how the urban socio‐natural landscape is held together through processes of maintenance and repair that cut across binaries of water and land (Thrift, ; Graham and Thrift, ; Mathur and da Cunha, ; Mandelman, ; Barnes, ). In doing so, the article engages with the nature of contemporary governance in São Paulo and calls for further attention into what Angel and Loftus () provocatively refer to as the ‘the set of socio‐ecological relations that goes by the name of the state’ (see also Angel, ; Harris, ).…”

Section: Methods and Conceptual Framingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linear Parks and the Political Ecologies of Permeability: Environmental displacement in São Paulo, Brazil

Millington¹

2018

Int J Urban Regional Res

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This article considers the politics of resettlement within ongoing efforts to construct the Tietê River Valley Park (Parque Várzeas do Tietê), a linear park that upon completion will be the largest linear park in the world. Located in the eastern periphery of São Paulo, Brazil, the proposed project uses riverbank naturalization to dampen floodpeaks and bring green space to underserved populations. Due to the presence of low‐income neighborhoods on the river's edge, however, the project calls for the removal of roughly 40,000 people. Drawing from urban political ecology and contemporary concerns about environmentally induced displacement, I consider the conflicts over resettlement that mark the project. I analyze the project itself and situate it within a regional context defined by autoconstruction, regularized flooding, and insecure tenure. I argue that despite claims that the project will yield less risky lives for displaced residents, the form through which the project is being developed actually puts displaced residents in heightened situations of risk. I consider how communities have organized to resist displacement, and call for an approach to governance in peripheral landscapes that takes seriously the histories of collective infrastructural provisioning and autoconstructed housing that have marked them for decades.

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“…(Benjamin, 2008;Sundaram, 2009) The 'archipelago' (Bakker, 2003) condition of infrastructure systems calls for a view beyond the 'modern infrastructure ideal'. (Furlong, 2014) For instance, in his ethnography of the water supply system in a suburban settlement in Mumbai, Nonetheless, we do know that the much-desired data-driven systems of the smart cities will have to coexist and interact with the present infrastructure systems. [3] While data-driven imaginaries boast of integrated modes of knowledge production, the infrastructural conditions will possibly only allow new and old systems to co-produce hybrids which are driven by more things than data alone.…”

Section: Indian Techno-urban Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

FCJ-217 Socio-Technical Imaginaries of a Data-Driven City: Ethnographic Vignettes from Delhi

Mertia¹

2017

FCJ

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As an imagination, the 'smart city' is rapidly becoming an integral part of our urban futures.Situated in the contemporary moment of 'data revolution' and India's techno-urban context, this paper is an attempt to reflect upon the socio-technical imaginaries of data-driven urbanism and the incumbent reconfigurations of how we know, experience and govern a city. The author provides ethnographic vignettes of five little traditions of data-driven urbanism in Delhi pertaining to: the new 'image of the city', the changing nature of expertise, civic data activism, data-driven consumer applications and political communication and analytics. Foregrounding the generative potentials of each of these socio-technical sites, the paper argues for a meta-analytics of data. doi: 10.15307/fcj. 29.217.2017 Several decades from now cities will have countless autonomous, intelligently functioning IT systems that will have perfect knowledge of users' habits and energy consumption, and provide optimum service … The goal of such a city is to optimally regulate and control resources by means of autonomous IT systems. While smart cities are just the latest entrants into the vibrant, ever-evolving theatre of techno-urban problem solving, the wide-ranging potentialities which this term evokes -despite its conceptual fuzzinesshave added new vigour to the discourse on urban infrastructures and techno-cultures both in India and abroad. (Khanna, 2012;Townsend, 2014) How do we then begin to unpack the umbrella term 'smart cities'?There cannot be one correct approach to this question, as it involves a panarchic (opposite of hierarchic)analysis of diverse sectors, institutions and actors. Given the current value-loaded and normatively technooptimistic discourse, perhaps it would be worthwhile to start reflecting upon broadly what constitutes a smart city.One fundamental aspect of smart cities is their 'data-driven' character and the relationship of this with the larger big data discourse.[2] As we embrace the 'data revolution' -which promises to transform knowledge production, business and governance through use of digital tools, techniques and infrastructures for analysing the ever-expanding data from our devices, the Internet, governments, etc. -data or rather data-drivenness is being increasingly viewed as technologically and politically vital for making cities smarter. This data-driven-ness, however, is not just a digital upgrade, enhancement or optimisation of our present infrastructures, practices and planning processes. Rather, like previous technological interventions in general, it reconfigures our epistemic and ontic formulations of a city.( Offenhuber and Ratti, 2014;Thrift, 2014) In other words, data-drivenness is reformulating the ways of knowing, experiencing and governing a city. This paper is essentially an exploratory, ethnographic engagement with these potential reformulations.

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STS beyond the “modern infrastructure ideal”: Extending theory by engaging with infrastructure challenges in the South

Cited by 170 publications

References 48 publications

Unlearning (Un)Located Ideas in the Provincialization of Urban Theory

Unlearning (Un)Located Ideas in the Provincialization of Urban Theory

Linear Parks and the Political Ecologies of Permeability: Environmental displacement in São Paulo, Brazil

FCJ-217 Socio-Technical Imaginaries of a Data-Driven City: Ethnographic Vignettes from Delhi

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