E-Journal

Collection no. 012: Infrastructural Anxieties

Fall 2024

Infrastructures are much more than just the mundane tangible objects they are perceived to be in everyday life by the ordinary bystander. Roads, fences, buildings, pipelines, sidewalks, railroads, sewage systems and so on, are all part of complex assemblages shaped by the “dynamic relational forms” that they share with people, things, organizations and the environment (Harvey and Knox 2015: 4). Infrastructures often represent the materialization of modernity, progress, mobility and positive influence of the state. However, they can also be the cause or manifestation of decline, and thereby invoke a sense of uncertainty or anxiety regarding the present and/or the future. Infrastructure (its failure, ruin or decline) can thus be considered a tangible, material conduit for anxiety.

Defined as a state of agitation, being troubled in mind, feeling uneasy about a coming event (Tyrer 1999: 3), anxiety is a physically embodied state involving both mental and emotional distress, combined with a more diffuse worry about what might (be)come. Thefocus on temporality here lies in looking at what the future holds and how current events will affect that future, both as individuals but also as part of combined entities such as governments and (nation-)states. Infrastructures, as Penny Harvey and Hannah Knox put forward, render the social and political visible in our contemporary world (Harvey and Knox 2015: 4). This in turn, we argue, creates uncertainty regarding the current situation of peoples and what the future might hold. The relationality between populations, infrastructure and anxiety in this way becomes tangible.

So, how does anxiety materialize through infrastructural settings? In what manner does infrastructural modernization, decay or renovation bring forth or combat anxiety? How do the opportunities that come with infrastructural development cope with setbacks or envisioned futures never met? What kind of role does technology play in this? How are these anxieties dealt with by the affected local populations and the authorities, and how does this impact their coexistence?

This edited collection seeks to answer these questions through a critical analysis of the dialectical relationship between infrastructure and anxiety, one that is mediated through materiality.

Edited by Mikel Venhovens and Mona Chettri

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Infrastructural Anxieties: An Introduction

In their introduction, Mona Chettri and Mikel Venhovens argue that the cyclical relationality between infrastructure and anxiety opens up new ways to think about lived experiences.

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Anxious Awakening of the Dormant…

Sindhunata Hargyono illustrates how long-term, albeit passive, infrastructural violence is heightened by the arrival of a base transceiver station in Kayan Hulu, Indonesia.

Anxious Atmospheres: Living in the Shadows of Coal

Charline Kopf discusses the impact of ‘affective infrastructures’ on the residents as well as the natural and spiritual landscape of Bargny, Senegal.

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Infrastructural Anxieties: Fengshui Meets China’s Toilet Revolution

Yuan Zhang considers how the Toilet Revolution addresses affective and cosmological tensions in the everyday and spiritual lives of rural Chinese people.

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Not Yet Connected: Anxieties of Rural Electrification

Kirsten Nielsen uncovers the emergence of new anxieties in northern Uganda, and highlights the symbolic value of electrical power infrastructure even when it fails.

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Preparing for Rain: Flood Defences in Accra’s Waterways

Afra Foli reveals how flood anxiety in Accra, Ghana, leads to the formation of new collaborations, which in turn help shape urban politics.

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Infrastructure and Anxiety of Return

Jiraporn Laocharoenwong illustrates how anxiety can mobilise a community through infrastructure in Mae La refugee camp in Thailand.

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Fenced In: Infrastructural Anxieties at the Danish–German Borderlands

Annika Pohl Harrisson and Michael Eilenberg examine how a Danish–German wild boar fence is the conduit for tensions past, present and future.

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Ambivalent Decay: Regeneration Anxieties in East London

Robert Deakin explores anxious belonging in the urban landscape through the perspective of Jimmy, a resident of a housing estate in east London.

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Airy Infrastructures: Anxieties and Eastern Himalayan ‘Remoteness’ (1945-1962)

Aditya Kakati looks at ‘airy infrastructures’ at Northeastern Frontier in 1945 and 1962, two pivotal moments in the history of Indian state-building.

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Complete Roadsides Collection no. 011 in high resolution (35 MB)

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Complete Roadsides Collection no. 012 in low resolution (2 MB)

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