Journal Article

Designing and domesticating an interstructure

Sørensen, Knut H., Suboticki, Ivana

2021

Overview

Technologies called infrastructures are often considered to be inherently and opaquely political, but how they exert their politics has been both empirically and conceptually debated. Infrastructure studies have largely focused on (in)visibility or ‘infra’ qualities as central criteria for assessing who and what is included and excluded, and when. In this paper we argue that this binary is unproductive and propose the concept of interstructure to highlight the connective and aesthetic qualities of technologies as well as their political features. These features may be quite transparent but also ambivalent, which we demonstrate by analysing an elevator for cyclists in Belgrade, Serbia. We draw on material semiotics to unpack the practices, the sense-making and the political work of this elevator in relation to its design and use. The analysis is based on interviews and an observation study. It shows that the elevator elicited substantial articulation work among most users as well as the operators who ran it. The elevator’s politics were produced through continuous negotiations among actors with partial views. Unpredictable connections captured a clearly ambivalent politics. We conclude by arguing that similar political dynamics may be present in transport and urban technologies more generally and that the concept of interstructure offers a fruitful avenue to study them and their politics. 被称为基础设施的技术通常被认为具有内在的和不透明的政治性，但是，关于它们如何发挥它们的政治作用，却一直存在实证和概念上的争论。一直以来，基础设施研究主要专注在它的（不）可见或“基础”性质，将这些作为评估何时、将哪些人、哪些内容包括在内或排除在外的核心标准。在本文中，我们认为这种二分法是无效的，并提出了中间设施(interstructure) 的概念，以突出技术的连接性和美观性特征，以及它们的政治特征。这些特征可能很明显，但也很矛盾，我们通过分析塞尔维亚贝尔格莱德的一部自行车电梯来证明这一点。我们利用物质符号学来解释电梯的设计和使用中的行为、意义创造和政治工作。分析基于访谈和观察研究。分析表明电梯在大多数用户和操作者中引发了大量的衔接工作。这部电梯的政治是通过持不同观点的行为者之间不断的谈判而产生的。不可预测的联系捕获了一个明显矛盾的政治。我们的结论是，类似的政治动态可能存在于更广泛的交通和城市技术中，而中间设施的概念为研究它们和它们的政治提供了一个富有成效的途径。

• Publisher: Sage Publications, Inc,SAGE Publications,Sage Publications Ltd
• Subject: Ambivalence / Infrastructure / Negotiations / Operators / Political culture / Political systems / Politics / Semiotics / Urban planning / Visibility