Infrastructures, practices and the materiality of daily life: revisiting urban metabolism

Résumé :

In this chapter, we explore the interdependent dynamics of infrastructures, devices and everyday practices. Rejecting the causal, linear relations implied by analyses that either suggest that new infrastructures are developed in response to pre-existing needs or that new infrastructural developments per se can ‘engineer’ new practices ‘out of the blue’, we argue that infrastructures, practices and their complex, dynamic interactions only ‘make sense’ in specific cultural and institutional contexts, which practices also contribute to shape, and to change. By employing the term of ‘infrastructuration’, we aim to capture and emphasize the material dimension of the dynamics of everyday life practices shaped by, but also shaping social norms, thus complementing the a-material notion of ‘structuration’ proposed by Giddens.