Universität Wien

240042 SE BM7 FbSE The Social Life of Infrastructure (2024S)

5.00 ECTS (2.00 SWS), SPL 24 - Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie
Continuous assessment of course work

Participation at first session is obligatory!

The lecturer can invite students to a grade-relevant discussion about partial achievements. Partial achievements that are obtained by fraud or plagiarized result in the non-evaluation of the course (entry 'X' in certificate). The plagiarism software 'Turnitin' will be used.
The use of AI tools (e.g. ChatGPT) for the attainment of partial achievements is only allowed if explicitly requested by the course instructor.
Moodle

Registration/Deregistration

Note: The time of your registration within the registration period has no effect on the allocation of places (no first come, first served).

Details

max. 25 participants
Language: English

Lecturers

Classes (iCal) - next class is marked with N

UPDATE 13.03.2024: changed dates
UPDATE 23.05.2024: changed dates

  • Friday 01.03. 11:30 - 13:00 Hörsaal A, NIG 4.Stock
  • Friday 08.03. 11:30 - 14:45 Hörsaal C, NIG 4. Stock
  • Friday 12.04. 11:30 - 14:45 Übungsraum (A414) NIG 4. Stock
  • Friday 10.05. 11:30 - 14:45 Übungsraum (A414) NIG 4. Stock
  • Friday 24.05. 11:30 - 14:45 Hörsaal A, NIG 4.Stock
  • Tuesday 04.06. 11:30 - 14:45 Hörsaal C, NIG 4. Stock
  • Friday 07.06. 11:30 - 14:45 Seminarraum A, NIG 4. Stock
  • Wednesday 19.06. 13:15 - 14:45 Hörsaal C, NIG 4. Stock

Information

Aims, contents and method of the course

What can roads and bridges, fiber optic cables and power stations, Google Maps and social media, tell us about social life today? What about logistics hubs and geo-engineering, waste processing and bike lanes? How are cities in particular sites of infrastructural density when it comes to both hard infrastructures, such as transport networks, and soft infrastructures, such as legal frameworks and capital flows? This course asks how material infrastructures mediate social life in the present. While drawing on anthropology’s classical concern for deep or hidden structures of relation, we will emphasize more recent work on infrastructure and the urban across the global North and global South. As a research-based seminar, moreover, students will be expected to develop and carry out a small-scale ethnography of an infrastructure of their choosing in Vienna over the course of several field visits during the semester.

Assessment and permitted materials

The course requires each student to read each session’s assigned readings; reflect on the readings in the form of one response paper per session; make one in-class presentation; participate actively in in-class discussion; and develop and carry out an ethnography of infrastructure. The ethnography of infrastructure should consist of a thick description of a particular infrastructural “site” chosen by the student early on in the semester. Because students are expected to be developing their own research project during the semester, mandatory readings will be fewer than usual. Class meetings will also take the form of workshops wherein we discuss students’ research plans together.

Minimum requirements and assessment criteria

Response papers: 30%
Participation: 30% (5% attendance, 10% in-class participation, 15% in-class presentation)
Ethnography: 40%

91-100 points: 1 (excellent)
81-90 points: 2 (good)
71-80 points: 3 (satisfactory)
61-70 points: 4 (sufficient)

To complete the course, students need to obtain at least 61 points.

Examination topics

The course does not require an exam.

Reading list

Possibilities below - full syllabus available on the first day of class.

Anand, Nikhil. 2017. Hydraulic City: Water and the Infrastructures of Citizenship in Mumbai. Duke University Press.

Bear, Laura. 2007. Lines of the Nation: Indian Railway Workers, Bureaucracy, and the Intimate Historical Self. Columbia University Press.

Boyer, Dominic. 2014. “Dominic Boyer on the Anthropology of Infrastructure.” Platypus: The CASTAC Blog. https://blog.castac.org/2014/03/dominic-boyer-on-the-anthropology-of-infrastructure/

Buier, Natalia. 2023. “The Anthropology of Infrastructure: The Boom and the Bubble?” Focaal 95: 46-60.

Chu, Julie Y. 2014. “When Infrastructures Attack: The Workings of Disrepair in China.” American Ethnologist 41(2): 351-367.

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In The Interpretation of Culture. Basic Books.

Graham, Steve and Simon Marvin. 2001. Splintering Urbanism: Networked Infrastructures, Technological Mobilities, and the Urban Condition. Routledge.

Graham, Stephen and Simon Marvin. 2022. “Splintering Urbanism at 20 and the ‘Infrastructural Turn.’” Journal of Urban Technology 29(1): 169-175.

Harney, Stefano and Fred Moten. 2013. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study. Minor Compositions.

Harvey, Penny and Hannah Knox. 2015. Roads: An Anthropology of Infrastructure and Expertise. Cornell University Press.

Larkin, Brian. 2008. Signal and Noise: Media, Infrastructure, and Urban Culture in Nigeria. Duke University Press.

Larkin, Brian. 2013. “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure.” Annual Review of Anthropology 42: 327-43.

Mitchell, Timothy. 2014. “Life of Infrastructure.” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 34(3): 437-439.

Muehlebach, Andrea. 2023. A Vital Frontier: Water Insurgencies in Europe. Duke University Press.

Simone, AbdouMaliq. 2004. “People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg.” Public Culture 16: 407-429.

Star, Susan Leigh. 1999. “The Ethnography of Infrastructure.” American Behavioral Scientist 43(3): 377-391.

Starosielski, Nicole. 2015. The Undersea Network. Duke University Press.

Von Schnitzler, Antina. 2017. Democracy’s Infrastructure: Technopolitics and Protest after Apartheid. Princeton University Press.

Association in the course directory

Last modified: Tu 28.05.2024 07:26