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Analyzing Infrastructures in the Anthropocene
Die Analyse von Infrastrukturen im Anthropozän
[journal article]
Abstract This contribution takes the multiple ecological crises as the background to connect discourses on sustainability and infrastructures. It discusses the preservation, development, or disorder of infrastructures by different actors and practices in the context of diverse imaginaries of sustainability. ... view more
This contribution takes the multiple ecological crises as the background to connect discourses on sustainability and infrastructures. It discusses the preservation, development, or disorder of infrastructures by different actors and practices in the context of diverse imaginaries of sustainability. When infrastructures are addressed and scrutinized against different visions of the future, their order-forming elements, dysfunctionalities, and transformation potentials come to the fore. The question of which decisions, translations, and norms are inscribed in infrastructures is of particular importance in the discourses on ecology. Moreover, focusing on the planetary dimensions of the ecological crisis adds particular complexity to the infrastructural analysis. An ecological perspective fundamentally challenges the view of infrastructure, as traditional concepts are no longer able to contribute to necessary planetary solutions. Since struggles for the futures of sustainability are struggles for the modernization and transformation of, as well as control over and through (material, immaterial, planetary), infrastructures, we argue that infrastructures will and should receive special attention in the social sciences and humanities in the future.... view less
Keywords
ecology; sustainability; modernization; transformation; crisis management (econ., pol.); infrastructure; human-environment relationship; environment crisis; social change; discourse; social science
Classification
Sociology of Science, Sociology of Technology, Research on Science and Technology
Ecology, Environment
Free Keywords
infrastructural turn; planetary infrastructures; ecological crises; energy (in)justices; Anthropocene; change
Document language
English
Publication Year
2022
Page/Pages
p. 7-28
Journal
Historical Social Research, 47 (2022) 4
Issue topic
Ruptures, Transformations, Continuities: Rethinking Infrastructures and Ecology
ISSN
0172-6404
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed