Infrastructural politics: A conceptual mapping and critical review
本文梳理并批判性评述了基础设施政治的概念,指出当前将其划分为霸权与从属两个对立领域的倾向,并提出将其理解为普通且充满争议的政治舞台,其中不同行动者的政治-基础设施策略以复杂冲突的方式共存。
The notion of infrastructural politics has been increasingly used in urban studies as it helps to explore urbanisation processes, the urban condition and urban life. Given its relevance, this article maps out and critically reviews the main analytical strands that inform its meanings, namely, conventional and popular infrastructural politics. These strands reveal the current tendency to demarcate infrastructural politics as two separate, antagonistic domains that associate the notion with particular hegemonic and subaltern actors, practices and processes. The article problematises this tendency and proposes a broader understanding of infrastructural politics as an ordinary and contentious political arena where diverse actors develop politico-infrastructural repertoires that co-exist in multifaceted, conflictive ways rather than as separate domains. Drawing on political ethnographic understandings of politics, infrastructural politics is conceived as a point of convergence where conventional and popular infrastructural politics meet and mesh. This suggests the possibility of cross-fertilising conversations between infrastructure studies and political ethnography that can refine our understanding of infrastructural politics, first, by promoting a more nuanced examination of the overlaps and interdependencies between hegemonic and subaltern politico-infrastructural actors and practices, and second, by addressing the critical role of infrastructures in enabling and materialising such overlaps and interdependencies.