Spaces of (in)formality and the politics of infrastructural labor: The case of tribal transit planning in the Northwest United States
研究了美国西北部部落社区交通规划者的日常实践，揭示其关系建设与战略定位构成一种基础设施劳动，这种劳动在对抗殖民遗产的同时，通过情感纽带连接非正式与正式空间，为改善部落居民流动性提供可能。
This study examines the relationship between infrastructural labor and the everyday praxis of transportation planners in tribal communities in the Northwest United States. We reveal how the relationship-building and strategic positioning of tribal transit planners constitutes a form of infrastructural labor. This labor yields a form of “community-cultivating” technical-material infrastructure vital for enhancing people’s mobility and, thus, life opportunities in an otherwise starkly immobile lived experience. Illuminated are the socio-political, affective, and (in)formal contours of this labor as it simultaneously contests and sustains colonial legacies, is mobilized by (and mobilizes) strong emotive currents ranging from despair to hope, and operates as the connective tissue between spaces of informal social connection and the domain of formality in which state actors, such as planners, are typically thought to be confined. In the process, the study nuances our understanding of infrastructural politics with a notable twist, as planners are usually depicted as technocratic-state actors, (re)productive of colonial legacies and neoliberal capitalism. Data is drawn from semi-structured interviews whereby tribal transit planners are revealed to tenaciously work through an infrastructure of social relations to collectively secure the resources they need, what we identify as a condition of possibility for generating more fundamental change. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and political implications of the study and offer two contradictory interpretations of our findings.