Infrastructures and the Anthropocene

For this ethnography assignment, we focus on infrastructures and consider how they are embedded with culture and our own being. In some ways, thinking about infrastructures is not too different from what we do in each chapter of Ken Guest’s textbook when we consider “the social life of things” (like sushi in Week 10, or the material culture of migrants in Week 12). We tend to think of infrastructures as boring, external systems that we can largely ignore. Electrical outlets and roads are good examples. But cultural anthropologists see them as culturally organized, experienced, and meaningful, and also as inseparable from how people live with each other in the world and how people imagine and act on all aspects of life.

To start the assignment, identify a few infrastructures that you could possibly focus on for the paper, like traffic signals, card payment terminals, sidewalks, or college information systems. (You will pick one of these to work with. Let’s not include things we’ve already read or talked about, like mobile phones.) To think about an infrastructure, ask questions about it like these: What is it, what makes it up, and what makes it work? What maintains it? What does it circulate? Where does what’s circulated come from and where does it go? How does it circulate and how is it accessed? How else is the infrastructure relational, and what are some of its connections? How does it actually work? How is it embedded with other technologies and infrastructures and in cultural expectations, everyday assumptions, and aspirations? You could also consider adapting questions Ken Guest (page 421) asks about the chocolate bar biography.

In developing this project, consider the properties of infrastructures we discussed in class. Infrastructures are embedded, sunk into other structures, social arrangements, and technologies; transparent to use, intuitive; learned, taken for granted, and newcomers have to learn them; linked with conventions of practice, shaping and shaped by conventions, like QWERTY keyboards. They have reach or scope beyond a single event or location; embody standards, connecting with other infrastructures and tools in standard ways; build on an installed base, working with existing infrastructures, like fiberoptic cables laid along railways; become (more) visible upon breakdown; and are fixed in modular increments, not all at once, so they mean different things and work differently in different locations.

Consider also the concept of ontology in the interactions of humans and infrastructures. Ontology is a fancy term, but it meshes with how we think about culture. In this case, ontology means “the kinds of thinking that is elicited within” “the situated and analytical practices and materialities of a given environment.”* That is, it is not what a particular environment (including people, technologies, and other species) and its components mean, but how they “compel us to

* Fisch, Michael. 2017. “Remediating Infrastructure: Tokyo’s Commuter Train Network and the New Autonomy,” in Infrastructures and Social Complexity: A Companion, edited by Penny Harvey, Casper Bruun Jensen, and Atsuro Morita, 115. New York: Routledge.

think and to become.” Lastly, consider how cultural anthropologists approach and understand the Anthropocene, and use that understanding to discuss how your infrastructures may be related to or involved in the Anthropocene.

Your Assignment

Pick an infrastructure and examine it with these questions and matters in mind. If it is possible, use the infrastructure to gain more direct familiarity with it, and if you can it is also good to spend time observing other people using it. Write field notes to describe these things. Then, interview at least one person to learn their thoughts about the infrastructure, how they use it, how it works for them, what they expect from it, what they experience when it does not work, etc. (If you have trouble thinking of an infrastructure or connecting with someone to interview, contact me.) Similar to the previous assignment, you cannot rely on interviewees to analyze infrastructures and their relationships for you; it is your job as the ethnographer to analyze the infrastructures and what people say and do in relation to them using concepts and ways of understanding that we are working with in class. Analyze your information by thinking with the questions and concepts above and with additional ideas you find in our readings. What do your findings tell you about infrastructures and culture? How is your infrastructure connected with the Anthropocene?

When you ask an interviewee to participate, explain what you are doing and seek their consent. The information you collect will go no further than the professor. In your paper, you should use pseudonyms to mask people’s identities.

Present your results in a four-page paper. A strong paper will begin with a statement of your argument. In the body of the paper, explain your fieldwork and develop your argument by describing what emerged from your observations and interview, using (and defining) appropriate concepts drawn from readings and class. Cite appropriate sources and provide appropriate references. Finally, discuss any implications of your findings. All work should use a suitable 12-point font, be double spaced, have one-inch margins, and be submitted via Moodle as a .docx or .rtf file by Monday, November 16. All work must be your own.