Multi-infrastructure studies: ethnographic and historical explorations (original) (raw)

2022, Eurasian Geography and Economics

These two fascinating books on the politics of urban infrastructures in two important cities of the Eurasian landmass not only offer rich descriptions of those cities’ relations with their infrastructures, they also present two intriguing ways of showing how infrastructures shape urban life and, ultimately, two different ways of producing knowledge about them. To be sure, the two volumes differ significantly in terms of academic discipline, analytical approach, empirical evidence, objects of study, theoretical conversations, and understanding of politics. Read together, however, they outline a productive conversation about how to foreground the interactions between different types of infrastructures in cities. Most social studies of infrastructures have analyzed only one network at a time. These two volumes suggest (Moss’s explicitly, Björkman’s implicitly) that there is much to learn from analyzing urban infrastructures together rather than in isolation. I will briefly compare and contrast them, and close by suggesting that both outline a space of theoretical exploration and offer a generative entry point into urban life, located in analyzing multiple city infrastructures simultaneously.