Lively Infrastructure

In: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/246366

Abstract

This paper examines the social life and sociality of urban infrastructure. Drawing on a case study of land occupations and informal settlements in the city of Belo Horizonte in Brazil, where the staples of life such as water, electricity, shelter and sanitation are co-constructed by the poor, the paper argues that infrastructures – visible and invisible – are deeply implicated in not only the making and unmaking of individual lives, but also in the experience of community, solidarity and struggle for recognition. Infrastructure is proposed as a gathering force and political intermediary of considerable significance in shaping the rights of the poor to the city and their capacity to claim those rights. ; This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final version is published by Sage in Theory, Culture and Society here: http://tcs.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/06/0263276414548490.abstract.