infrastructure

is unstable and unruly, and rather than being gridden into relations, new relations are made with materials.

The main finding of the book is that infrastructures are as unstable and unruly as the environments on which they are constructed. Contra Bruno Latour's depiction of labs as spaces, where materials are 'gridded' into relations with one another, ethnographic attention paid to road engineers reveals a much more dynamic and aesthetic process whereby technicians made 'new relations with materials as much as they ended up 'gridding' them' (94). Harvey and Knox give a fascinating insight into how, through experimentation and ingenuity, engineers produce 'stable and useful fictions' (107) that bring large infrastructural projects to fruition.'

Penny Harvey

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Penny Harvey