Infrastructure Of Everyday Life Research Articles

Redefining Infrastructure: Schools in a Care Economy

This piece expands the definition of infrastructure to include the "infrastructure of everyday life."

More than just ‘working from home’: domestic space, economies and living infrastructures during and beyond pandemic times

ABSTRACT This article draws on an ethnographic study of employees working from home in 13 Australian households in Sydney, New South Wales and Melbourne, Victoria during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Conducting interviews and household walk throughs via video conferencing software, supplemented by diaries and pictures from householders, we were initially interested in how people managed working from home via digital technology. As the project evolved however, we were struck by the reconfigured role of home life more broadly. During this time, many people found themselves not only restricted to their homes but having to experiment with new modes of living as households became hubs for economic, social, and infrastructural flows and the circulation of goods and services. The households in our study engaged in an array of practices related to self-managing employment from home. What we might think of as the ‘work of working from home’ practices included everything from managing workspaces, utilities and energy use, to the emotional atmosphere of the home. This reconfiguration of the home as a central hub of social, cultural, and economic life can be productively understood via two complementary approaches: what feminist planners Gilroy and Booth ([1999]. Building an infrastructure for everyday lives. European planning studies, 7 (3), 307–324) have termed ‘the infrastructure of everyday life’, and Gibson and Graham's ([2008] Diverse economies: performative practices for ‘other worlds’. Progress in human geography, 32 (5), 613–632) work on alternative economies. While the practices we studied could be seen as representing a privileged (in terms of class and race) pandemic response, following Gibson-Graham we frame our findings in terms of (re)imagining future social realities. We identify 3 categories: new domesticities; the ‘living infrastructures’ of work–home life; and everyday economies. In doing so we highlight the hidden and often feminized elements of civic and domestic life – the ‘foundational economy’ (Barbera, F., Negri, N., and Salento, A., 2018. From individual choice to collective voice. Foundational economy, local commons and citizenship. Rassegna Italiana di sociologia, 2, 371–398.) of care and service provision and beyond – to emphasize just how central this foundational economy has become to our post-vaccination futures.

O Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) como um macrossistema: território, técnica e política

O Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) constitui um macrossistema no território brasileiro ao agregar ampla e diversa materialidade, organizando e gerenciando seus fluxos. Ademais, dois atributos o distinguem: grande sensibilidade às especificidades dos lugares e centralização e descentralização técnica e política das ações. A dimensão macro é o SUS, o que leva a compreendê-lo para além de um sistema de saúde, por meio de particularidades como: a multidimensionalidade, que engloba elementos de outras instâncias da vida (social, econômica, cultural e política); a gama diversa e desigual de atores (estatais e não estatais) que o move e aos sentidos de suas ações; e a transescalaridade de sua concreção nos lugares (nexos locais, nacionais e internacionais). Como infraestrutura da vida cotidiana, é um macrossistema hegemônico atuando sobre as condições objetivas (tecnoesfera) e subjetivas (psicoesfera) da existência, concepção que tem importantes implicações na política de saúde e na integração do território.

The Implication of Slum Relocations into Low-cost High-Rises: An Analysis through the infrastructure of everyday life

This paper presents the implications of slum relocation into low-cost high-rise housing development. Desa Mentari was selected as a case study for this research where its characteristics as a low-cost high-rise residential for relocated former squatter dwellers best fit the requirement. The data were then analysed against the five domains of the Infrastructure of Everyday Life which are home and neighbourhood, sources of support, making ends meet, enjoyment and having a say. From the analysis, the author established that the major implications are the breakdown of the community structure, the rise of social ills, the deficient living environment and racial conflicts. The work conclusively argues that housing and planning policies should put much consideration into the everyday life activities, issues and needs of particular communities within society.

Incoded counter-conduct: What the incarcerated can teach us about resisting mass surveillance

This paper reviews penal history in order to consider forms of resistance to mass surveillance. Because experiences of surveillance are endemic to incarcerated life, identifying tactics of protest among these populations provides valuable insights for potential forms of counter-conduct in other circumstances of ubiquitous monitoring. We introduce the term incodification as a means of describing conditions of continuous surveillance ingrained into infrastructures of everyday life, even as these conditions give rise to tactics of resistance. We focus on three forms of protest: hunger strikes, alternate communication networks and viral dance videos, drawing on Foucault’s theory of askesis in order to develop our understanding of incodification. Our objective in introducing this term, and with our analysis as a whole, is to provoke and promote theoretical and activist projects that both address and subvert infrastructures of incodification.

Incoded Counter-Conduct: Technologies of Resistance and Conditions of Incarceration

This paper reviews penal history in order to consider forms of resistance to mass surveillance. Because experiences of surveillance are endemic to incarcerated life, identifying tactics of resistance among these populations provides valuable insights for potential forms of counter-conduct in other circumstances of ubiquitous monitoring. We introduce the term incodification as a means of describing conditions of continuous surveillance ingrained into infrastructures of everyday life, even as these conditions give rise to tactics of resistance. We focus on three forms of protest: hunger strikes, alternate communication networks and viral dance videos, drawing on Foucault’s theory of askesis in order to develop our understanding of incodification. Our objective in introducing this term, and with our analysis as a whole, is to provoke and promote theoretical and activist projects that both address and subvert infrastructures of incodification.

Managing the business of everyday life: the roles of space and place in “mumpreneurship”

Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to develop gendered entrepreneurship theory through a focus on the roles of space and place in the daily lives and businesses of mothers who have configured business around the daily routines of family work.Design/methodology/approach –Through a consideration of the accounts of 29 “mumpreneurs” and using a framework forwarded by Jarvis to understand the geographically embedded “infrastructure of everyday life”, this paper seeks to understand mumpreneurial decision making, choice and constraint.Findings –Spatial factors, in their myriad forms, run through and affect mothers’ different levels of capability and constraint, and thus the (gender-role and entrepreneurial) “choices” that individuals and families make. Placing families in the realities of specific, material locales helps to embed our understandings of these decision-making processes in real places.Originality/value –This discussion: advances new understanding about how space and place enable or constrain mumpreneurship (in particular) and entrepreneurship (more generally); and provides a lens through which to examine the structure/agency dualism in relation to gendered entrepreneurship.

The Methodology of User-Sensitive Service Design within Urban Planning

The increasingly complex living environment poses challenges in everyday life that traditional urban planning cannot meet. We argue that the methodology called the user-sensitive service design within urban planning is viable for many stakeholders in a situation where the infrastructure of everyday life is shattering and the uncertainty and ambiguity of the planning process and outcomes are prevailing. Our aim is to present the methodology and its application in the planning and development of digitised services in a neighbourhood of Helsinki. The methodology turns out to be a hybridiser and a bridge builder that embeds urban planning in the local context. In addition, it is a vehicle for transferring planning content to the phases of implementation and use, resulting in the emergence of glocal digital spaces.

Developments in household services in Europe: working conditions and labour relations

Drawing on a study of employment in household services in eight EU states, the article summarises some of the factors stimulating growing demand for these services, and argues that they are an important part of the necessary infrastructure of everyday life for Europe's citizens. The nature of the work performed by those working in this sector is analysed, and the important skills required of household services workers if high quality services are to be delivered are examined. The article concludes by drawing attention to the need for the social partners to address a number of urgent policy issues, including pay and conditions, the need for more attractive career structures and problems of labour supply, taking into account the particular challenges for both collective bargaining and regulation in this sector.