Abstract
When infrastructural technology is functioning correctly, it is often considered to recede from view and become invisible. According to this perspective, visibility is restored in cases of breakdown and malfunction, which for this reason, are often understood to represent important epistemic opportunities for grasping previously hidden aspects of infrastructure. This article seeks to outline the limitations of the idea that infrastructural failure has a positive epistemic function by distinguishing between two fundamentally different ways in which the nature of technological function can be conceptualised; the first understands function as stemming primarily from the way a technology was designed and produced, the second as a process sustained by constant human activities of maintenance and repair. After illustrating how a number of recent studies of infrastructure build upon insights granted by the latter process perspective, this article aims to demonstrate how the experience of breakdown itself does little to facilitate a shift towards understanding infrastructure in this way. For this reason, this article ends with a suggestion for a shift in emphasis in studies of infrastructure, away from breakdown and towards a sustained examination of everyday practices of maintenance, repair and modification of infrastructural technologies.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The idea that breakdown renders technology visible for analysis is by no means limited to studies of infrastructure. For a recent volume exploring the heuristic potential of material disruption for other kinds of technology, alongside the origins of this methodological strategy, see Strebel, Bovet, and Sormani (2019).
- 2.
For a further elaboration on technology as process, see my Young (2021).
- 3.
- 4.
- 5.
References
Alampalli, S. (2014). Designing bridges for inspectability and maintainability. In M. Frangopol & Y. Tsompanakis (Eds.), Maintenance and safety of aging infrastructure. London: CRC Press.
Bijker, W. E. (1995). Of bicycles, bakelites and bulbs: Towards a theory of sociotechnical change. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Bowker, G. C., & Star, S. L. (1999). Sorting things out: Classification and its consequences. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Collins, H. M. (2010). Tacit and explicit knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Crain, M., Poster, W. R., & Cherry, M. (2016). Introduction: Conceptualising invisible labour. In M. Crain, R. Poster, & M. Cherry (Eds.), Invisible labor: Hidden work in the contemporary world (pp. 3–27). Oakland: University of California Press.
Denis, J., & Pontille, D. (2014). Maintenance work and the performativity of urban inscriptions: The case of Paris subway signs. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 32(3), 404–416.
Edgerton, D. (2006). The shock of the old: Technology and global history since 1900. London: Profile Books.
Edgerton, D. (2010). Innovation, technology or history: What is the historiography of technology about? Technology and Culture, 51(3), 680–697.
Edwards, P. N. (2003). Infrastructure and modernity: Force, time and social organization in the history of sociotechnical systems. In T. Misa, P. Brey, & A. Feenburg (Eds.), Modernity and technology (pp. 185–226). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Graham, S. (2004). Constructing premium network spaces: Reflections on infrastructure networks and contemporary urban developments. In R. Hanley (Ed.), Moving people, goods and information in the 21st century: The cutting edge infrastructures of networked cities (pp. 246–267). New York: Routledge.
Graham, S. (2010). When infrastructures fail. In S. Graham (Ed.), Disrupted cities: When infrastructure fails (pp. 1–40). New York: Routledge.
Graham, S., & Simon, M. (2001). Splintering urbanism: Networked infrastructures, technological mobilities and the urban condition. London: Routledge.
Graham, S., & Thrift, N. (2007). Out of order: Understanding repair and maintenance theory. Culture and Society, 24(3), 1–25.
Harman, G. (2002). Tool being: Heidegger and the metaphysics of objects. New York: Open Court.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (J. Mcquarrie & E. Robinson, Trans.). Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Henke, C. (2000). The mechanics of workplace order: Towards a sociology of repair. Berkeley Journal of Sociology, 44, 55–81.
Ihde, D. (1990). Technology and the lifeworld: From garden to earth. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Jackson, S. J. (2014). Rethinking Repair. In T. Gillespie, P. Boczkowski, & K. Foot (Eds.), Media technologies: Essays on communication, materiality and society (pp. 221–240). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Joerges, B. (1988). Large technical systems: Concepts and issues. In R. Mayntz & T. Hughes (Eds.), The development of large technical systems (pp. 9–36). Frankfurt: Campus Verlag.
Kaika, M., & Swyngedouw, E. (2000). Fetishizing the modern city: The phantasmagoria of urban technological networks. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 24(1), 120–138.
Larkin, B. (2013). The politics and poetics of infrastructure. Annual Review of Anthropology, 42, 327–343.
Latour, B. (1999). Pandora’s hope: Essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Martin, B., & Richards, E. (1995). Scientific knowledge, controversy and public decision making. In S. Jasanoff, E. Markle, J. Petersen, & T. Pinch (Eds.), Handbook of science and technology studies (Revised ed., pp. 506–526). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Oldenziel, R. (2001). Man the maker, woman the consumer: The consumption junction revisited. In A. Creager, E. Lunbeck, & L. Schiebinger (Eds.), Feminism in twentieth century science, technology, and medicine (pp. 128–148). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Orr, J. E. (1996). Talking about machines: Ethnography of a modern job. New York: ILR Press.
Oudshoorn, N., & Pinch, T. (Eds.). (2003). How users matter: The co-construction of users and technology. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Pursell, C. (1995). Seeing the invisible: New perspectives in the history of technology. Icon, 1, 9–15.
Russell, A., & Vinsel, L. (2018). After innovation, turn to maintenance. Technology and Culture, 59(1), 1–25.
Star, S. L. (1999). The ethnography of infrastructure. The American Behavioral Scientist, 43(3), 377–391.
Strebel, I., Bovet, A., & Sormani, P. (2019). Repair work ethnographies: Revisiting breakdown, relocating materiality. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan.
Young, M. T. (2021). Maintenance. In D. Michelfelder & N. Doorn (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Engineering.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Young, M.T. (2021). Now You See It (Now You Don’t): Users, Maintainers and the Invisibility of Infrastructure. In: Nagenborg, M., Stone, T., González Woge, M., Vermaas, P.E. (eds) Technology and the City. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology, vol 36. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52313-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52313-8_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-52312-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-52313-8
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)