The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure
2013/08/28 by Brian Larkin · 81 citations
Social Sciences · #Water Governance and Infrastructure #Geographies of human-animal interactions #Posthumanist Ethics and Activism
paper · doi:10.1146/annurev-anthro-092412-155522
Abstract
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological literature that seeks to theorize infrastructure by drawing on biopolitics, science and technology studies, and theories of technopolitics. I also examine other dimensions of infrastructures that release different meanings and structure politics in various ways: through the aesthetic and the sensorial, desire and promise.
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