CFP: New Directions in the History of Infrastructure
/Interdisciplinary Conference at the Danish Post &
Tele Museum, 26 –28th September 2014 //
/2nd Call for papers – Deadline December 1st 2013//
The purpose of the conference is to bring together
historians and cultural researchers from all over the world for an
inter-disciplinary discussion about current tendencies in the study of
infrastructure. The conference is organized as a joint venture between the
Danish Post & Tele Museum and the Department of Culture and Global Studies
at Aalborg University. The conference will be held at Post & Tele Museum in
Copenhagen, from the 26th - 28th September 2014, and the working language at
the conference will be English.
The main theme is the role of infrastructure in the
modernization of society, from about 1850 to the present day, viewed in the
light of recent research in history and cultural studies. The conference takes
its point of departure in the notion of a material turn within the humanities,
and highlights the dynamic and crucial relations between human actors,
technology and society in the historical processes.
The development of infrastructure, and its significance
for society, has been a largely neglected field of research in history and its
neighboring disciplines, both in Denmark and in the wider international
research community. Previous research on the history of infrastructure has
primarily been carried out within a sub-discipline of history called the
History of Science and Technology. As such, it has been dominated by studies of
so-called Large Technical Systems (LTS) – a concept introduced by the
American historian of technology Thomas P Hughes (Hughes, 1983, pp. 5–17).
LTS is a concept with a firm explanatory potential, and it has yielded a wide
array of interesting research.
However, it draws a strict and increasingly obsolete line
between material and immaterial forms of infrastructure, and it focuses on
technology and technical system-builders at the expense of the surrounding
society. And it is society that will be in focus at the Copenhagen conference,
not the technical systems.
Yet infrastructural perspectives and research questions
are gradually becoming more visible in cultural research, in the wake of the
aforementioned material turn. Inspired by the French anthropologist and
philosopher of science Bruno Latour, and the complex theoretical considerations
surrounding the fields of Science Technology and Society
(STS) and Actor Network Theory (ANT), a growing number of
cultural researchers have directed their attention to the multifaceted
interaction between human actors and technological objects (things,
materiality) within historically situated networks
(Bennet and Joyce, 2010, pp. 3 –8). This ongoing re-orientation from text to
thing has opened up new perspectives in the study of infrastructure. For
instance, scholars today are giving increasing attention to how infrastructure
developments are experienced by end-users, and there is a clearer emphasis on
human practice (social, cultural and political) (Trentmann, 2006, pp.
303–305). There is also a growing awareness about the significance of various
types of conflict and tension for infrastructural change and development, from
technical breakdowns, environmental pollution and political struggles to the
discrepancies between entrepreneurial visions and everyday user experiences.
Another theme is the issue of political governance by means of material and
technological devices and systems, such as the secret state surveillance of
telecommunications and so-called cyber infrastructure.
Another central aim of the conference is to highlight the
wider societal relevance of infrastructure studies –and to argue for its
practical applicability. The development of new forms of infrastructure is
never a straightforward process, and the practical applications hardly ever
evolve according to plan. In fact, according to existing research on the
subject, there is always a gap between vision and implementation, irrespective
of whether the project under scrutiny concerns railroads, sewers, mobile
telephony or landline grids (Jackson et al, 2007, pp. 7 –9). Thus, there is a
need for historically informed studies of infrastructural dynamics and
tensions: studies of impact, utilization and cultural embeddedness, which could
be used to improve and strengthen the basis for decisions on future
infrastructural projects. Accordingly, our Call for Papers invites papers that
delve into particular kinds of infrastructure – communications, sanitation,
transport, energy supply etc. – but we are also welcoming theoretical
contributions on issues such as infrastructure and modernization or the
analytical significance of the material turn.
*References*
Tony Bennet and Patrick Joyce (eds.), /Material Powers.
Cultural Studies and the Material Turn/, Routledge, 2010.
Thomas P Hughes, /Networks of Power. Electrification in
Western Society
1880 –1930/, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983.
Stephen J Jackson, Paul N Edwards, Geoffrey C Bowker, and
Cory P Knobel, “Understanding Infrastructure: History, Heuristics, and
Cyberinfrastructure Policyâ€,
/First Monday: Peer Reviewed Journal on the Internet/ 2006:12 (6) <http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_6/jackson/index.html>.
Frank Trentmann:â€Materiality
in the Future of History: Things, Practices, and Politicsâ€, /Journal of British Studies/
2009:48, 283–307.