Interventions on Democratizing Infrastructure

Abstract

The proliferation of civic demands for democratisation through material infrastructures, including those pertaining to energy, water, currency, and transport, indicates a desire to transform how societal needs are provided, and how technologies of provision might act as ‘loci of hope’ (Bernardo, 2010) for achieving a more desirable and equitable future (Dawson, 2020). However, while activists use the language of democracy to advocate for a transformation of the social, economic, and political relations enacted through infrastructures, neither they nor the academic community necessarily agree on the form or purpose of these new, material, forms of democracy. The aim of this intervention is to better equip political geographers and others to analyse calls for democratic practices rooted in (material) infrastructures.