Introduction: Infrastructures as Ontological Experiments

TLDR

Infrastructures are conventionally viewed as material substrates that enable social action and serve as vehicles for political values, yet their experimental nature—integrating disjunctive elements and producing slow, incremental transformations—has largely escaped anthropological scrutiny. This introduction argues for treating infrastructures as ontological experiments and stresses the need to make their transformative capacities visible to anthropology. The paper concludes with a brief introduction to the contributions of the special issue. These experimental infrastructures create and transform practical, materialized ontologies that shape culture, society, and politics.

Abstract

Infrastructures have conventionally been viewed as material substrates underlying social action. On this basis, cultural anthropology has engaged infrastructure as vehicles through which political values and symbols are made manifest. In contrast, this introduction, and the contributions that follow, specifies an orientation to infrastructures as ontological experiments. At issue is a view of infrastructures as experimental systems that integrate a multiplicity of disjunctive elements and spin out new relations between them. The result is the creation and transformation of different forms of practical, materialized ontologies, which give shape to culture, society, and politics. Given that these transformations are often slow and incremental, they often unfold under the radar of anthropological analysis. However, we argue that it is important for the anthropology of infrastructure to find ways of bringing their world-changing capacities into view. The paper ends with a brief introduction to the contributions of the special issue.