Infrastructures, intersections and societal transformations

doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2018.07.039

Technological Forecasting and Social Change

Volume 137, December 2018, Pages 160-167

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2018.07.039 Get rights and content

Under a Creative Commons license

open access

Highlights

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Extends beyond single-system, linear, phased account of infrastructural development
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Focus on relational account and intersections between infrastructures in four cases
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Cycling, Electric Vehicle charging, land-use and electricity, and fridge-freezers
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Co-constitution, threading through, historical layering, coexisting configurations
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Such complex intersections require permanently reflexive infrastructural governance.

Abstract

There is renewed and increasing interest in understanding the part that infrastructures play in societal transformations, especially in response to the various challenges of climate change. Studies that focus on these issues tend to examine infrastructures in isolation from each other, and tend to work with evolutionary accounts of incremental change punctuated by short periods of radical innovation. This paper questions both these abstractions. Using four empirical cases, it directs attention to intersections between infrastructures at specific times and places, highlighting the dynamic qualities of infrastructures-in-use, and conceptualising societal transformations as outcomes of these intersections. Four forms of intersection are elaborated – co-constitution, adaptation and threading through, historical layering, and coexisting configurations. Instances of each are used to illustrate some of complex and often ambiguous processes through which infrastructures interact. The paper ends by outlining implications for future research and for interventions by policy-makers and others seeking to influence the ways in which infrastructures intersect.

Keywords

Infrastructure

Intersection

Societal transformation

Innovation

Cited by (0)

Noel Cass is a Senior Research Associate in the Demand Centre at Lancaster University. He is an environmental sociologist with interests in energy systems (particularly the built environment and mobility). Recent publications are on energy-related standards and UK speculative office development, and the affective and social practice dimensions of commuting and other forms of everyday mobility.

Tim Schwanen is Associate Professor in Transport Studies and Director of the Transport Studies Unit in the University of Oxford. His research concentrates on the geographies of the everyday mobilities of people, goods and information, and amongst other topics is focused on innovation and experimentation, politics and governance, and justice issues surrounding low-carbon mobilities and cities. Other themes of his work include futures and temporality, social and spatial inequality, well-being, and the philosophy of transport and mobility.

Elizabeth Shove is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, and principal investigator of the DEMAND research centre. She has written about social practices, daily life and technological and infrastructural arrangements. Elizabeth is author/co-author of ten books, including The Nexus of Practices (2017 Routledge) edited with Allison Hui and Theodore Schatzki; The Dynamics of Social Practice, with Mika Pantzar and Matt Watson (2012: Sage), and Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience (2003: Berg).