On June 9-11 2027, the conference at ZZF Potsdam will examine how different types of infrastructural actors (system builders, service and maintenance personnel, users, and activists) created and transformed the mobility, energy, digital, and communication infrastructures, which were essential for the creation of contemporary, highly mobile societies.
Over the last few decades, political debates on infrastructure have intensified and commanded greater attention. Digital infrastructures expand at a breathtaking pace, older transport infrastructures collapse, while energy and mobility transitions depend on the provision of new infrastructures which are highly contested. Critical infrastructure is a potential and actual target in wars and conflicts. Globally, extractive infrastructures have become sites of contestation between multinational corporations, state actors, and indigenous communities. Climate activists try to block or even sabotage infrastructures, and awareness of their exclusionary effects has risen. These developments have helped propel the history of material infrastructures from esoteric topic in the history of science and technology to a topic of mainstream interest to historians seeking to examine the »matter that enables the movement of other matter« (Brian Larkin). Infrastructures enable and influence the functioning of the highly mobile economies and societies that emerged over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and, thus, their analysis is crucial to understanding economic, social, cultural, and political developments in contemporary history.
Historians have long shown that the creation and design of large technological systems depend on economic, political, cultural, and social factors. Accordingly, they are not neutral but express values by enabling and facilitating certain forms of mobility and interaction while impeding and excluding others (Stephen C. Slota/Geoffrey C. Bowker). In this sense, it may even be tempting to bestow them with agency. Yet, concrete infrastructures are the product of both material characteristics and actors who invent, build, maintain, use, subvert or contest them. This conference proposes to focus on these infrastructural actors and their agency in the creation and transformation of mobile societies. We distinguish between four different types of actors and invite papers examining their agency with respect to specific infrastructures, above all focusing on mobility, energy, digital, and communication infrastructures:
1. Since the publication of Thomas Parker Hughes’ seminal study Networks of Power, system-builders have long been subjected to scrutiny. We invite papers that examine their position and agency within the context of engineering, economic, and political forces from the top-level to the ground. How does their agency differ across infrastructure types and scales?
2. Some infrastructures need constant monitoring by human actors to sustain them; all of them may break down and then need to be fixed. Operators, along with service and maintenance personnel, are thus crucial to their functioning. What is their agency in these processes? In how far can they influence not only if but also how infrastructures work?
3. In social and cultural studies, users have received great scholarly interest. Across various types of infrastructure, we want to examine if and how material structures and devices determine user behavior and how socio-political factors influence the ways in which users engage with them. Do people use infrastructures creatively for different purposes than those intended by the system-builders? What are the effects of unintended uses, manipulations, and disruptions?
4. The construction of large infrastructures is always contested. Historically, it has often set off NIMBY protests, but with the rise of the environmentalist movement, a broader anti-infrastructural activism emerged. Why and how do infrastructural activists and protests challenge infrastructures? What factors determine whether they block or sabotage? How has political activism itself changed as a result of rapidly changing infrastructures? Concentrating on infrastructural actors and activism, will examine the changing boundaries and opportunities for human agency in increasingly technological, mobile, energy-intensive societies.
We invite original contributions dealing with one or several of these groups of infrastructural actors from both junior and senior scholars. To allow ample time for discussions, presentations should not exceed 20 minutes. The conference will take place on June 9-11, 2027, and the conference language will be English. We intend to cover travel and accommodation costs for participants.
If you are interested in participating, please submit an abstract of 300 words and a short author bio to Carolyn Taratko (taratko [at] zzf-potsdam [dot] de) by October 9. Participants will be notified of their selection soon after, with additional information relating to logistics to follow. Questions may be addressed to the conference organizers (Rüdiger Graf (graf [at] zzf-potsdam [dot] de), Michael Homberg, Carolin Liebisch-Gümüş, Isabella Löhr, Christopher Neumaier, Carolyn Taratko).