Power and positionality

Ruptures can also help to reveal the power dynamics within

infrastructures. An awareness of how infrastructures are concerned with power lies at the heart of Susan Leigh Star’s thinking on

infrastructuring (Puig de la Bellacasa 2016). Star’s work is rooted in an understanding of the dynamic and relational nature of infrastructures, which seeks to push against the ‘organising and categorising capacities of dominant systems of power’ (Agid 2016, 81). In particular Star and Ruhleder (1996) note how infrastructuring can standardise membership in ways that benefit some people over others. These concerns are resonant with PD research, which tends to embrace infrastructuring as a political project (see for example, Karasti 2014, le Dantec and DiSalvo 2013, Marttila et al. 2014). As Agid (2016) proposes:

To do infrastructuring, then, is to design, reveal, challenge, or theorize systems and structures with people while foregrounding their dynamic and socio- material contexts in that process. (81)

One can easily point to how infrastructures are used as demonstrations of national power and ideological progress (Larkin 2013). In our current moment, the issue of climate change intersects with powerful large- scale infrastructures that threaten the habitability of the Earth. This can lead to a sense of disempowerment, or an anxiety fuelled impasse (Beuret 2015), which I referred to at the beginning of this dissertation. It’s very difficult to know how to respond to climate change – what is being asked of us? How can we identify what to do or what to work towards when the landscape keeps changing and when the forces that we’re working against appear to be so powerful? When we gather together in times of impasse and uncertainty, the purpose of any group needs to be held lightly, as it will undoubtedly shift in response to changing circumstances.

Some initiatives such as Slow Cities and Transition Towns seem to have been able to establish replicable models that can spread between locations and provide a common cause that people can rally around. These models enable people to exercise their power at a local level, while participating in a broader network of change. The work of The Weekly Service is much less tangible by comparison. It potentially provides a complimentary regenerative and nurturing space to these more materially outcome-oriented models. Conversely, through

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comparisons like this, I find that I want to challenge myself to rethink what constitutes transition in these times. Perhaps it’s better to do away with binary notions of inner and outer social change work and simply acknowledge that they are interrelated (du Plessis 2015). Other policy platforms and social movements such as The Green New Deal and Extinction Rebellion have more recently garnered significant support. However all organising efforts experience ruptures and uncertainties surrounding their effectiveness, despite having clear rallying calls or replicable models. As one recent advocate of Transition Towns commented, the network has not managed to effect the large- scale transition it desired and has paid little attention to the inner dimensions of transition (Giangrande 2018).

Any local resistance to harmful large-scale infrastructures, needs to be sustained over the long-term – often beyond the scope of individual lifetimes (Agid 2016). As such, infrastructuring activities also need to be generative of hope, as well as offering people something that they can begin to influence and shape. Within local infrastructures, power is present and manifest in how we are able to act or express our view relative to others (Marttila and Botero 2017). As I initially expressed, The Weekly Service was something on a human scale that I could grab a hold of. This led to a gradual empowerment of my ability to continue to engage with climate change as an issue, rather that fall into despair. Critical to this work is an understanding of how power is related to one’s positionality in a given context, which includes one’s race, gender, class and so forth, and the prior history, relationships and knowledge that is accrued through working with others (Suchman 2002). These factors are not fixed, as they will always change depending on who we are working with and how that affects how we experience and exercise power. This means viewing power as contextual and contingent, where our task (as designers or leaders) is to become more aware of our position in relation to others, and what differentiates us – rather than choosing to simply ignore this (Lorde 1984).

Within the core team across 2017, I was working as a young woman, with the two male co-founders of the organisation. While I held the title of director, I was situated differently to the co-founders in relation to The Weekly Service’s development. I had not been involved in starting The Weekly Service and I had no prior business experience. These factors contributed to an imbalance of power amongst us. During the period of prolonged tension, my position as a researcher was perceived by one member of the core team, as compromising my ability to be clear-headed about how I assumed the role of director. This criticism was levelled at me when I sought to advocate for more During the turbulence,

criticisms were levelled at the core team surrounding how we held power within the member group. I found that I was quite confronted by being in a position of power and receiving criticism for how I was holding it. By drawing on PD literature (Agid 2018, Björgvinsson et al. 2010, Hillgren et al. 2011) and the work of other scholars such as feminist economic geographers Gibson-Graham (2007), I was able to recognise that I held a relatively

simplistic notion of power as tainted.

collaborative and potentially uncertain forms of governance, above and over assuming control. Conversely, in other moments when there was more trust between us, I exercised considerable power through my visual communication design skills, where I was able to effectively persuade the core team to adopt particular ideas. This suggests that certain conditions, were more conducive to my ability to exercise my power.

By taking into account how we are located and accountable in the work we do with others (Agid 2016, Suchman 2002), we can begin to notice how people in local contexts exercise power differently. In the context of The Weekly Service, members sought to reshape relationships through processes that disrupted, revealed and challenged the evolution of The Weekly Service. The example of the rupture I offer in this chapter was one such occasion where a challenge was made to open up the agenda for more open conversation. This event revealed to me how the core team’s capacity to set the agenda through invitations and the tone of atmospheres was part of the way that we held power. These strategies (which I discussed in Chapter 5 and 6) cultivated our ability to improvise and relate as a community. This ability to improvise and relate was also helpful when working through tension as it arose. To quote Mark Elliott (2019) once again, ‘by coming together around a shared purpose...we generate tensions in order to resolve them’ (np). Within local infrastructuring, people are entangled in ‘performing multiple identities during their active involvement in collaborative settings’ (Crabu and Magaudda 2018, 170). In other words, power dynamics shift and change as the work proceeds and people perform different roles and take up different positions. As members of the core team we were often negotiating our role within the community and the power that we held. In the lead up to the rupture we had intended to open up a discussion surrounding our role as a core team within The Weekly Service. We felt unsure about what our role was within the community and we were keen to explore this further as a group. This decision was re-evaluated as the date of the retreat grew closer. In its place a briefing was delivered to the member group about how we were going as a community / organisation and what loose plans the core team had for the future. The decision to brief the community emerged when I was away on leave. It grew from a concern for how an open-ended conversation might create unnecessary uncertainty and confusion amongst members. It also arose from a commitment to the sustainable financial model that we were attempting to pursue, in order to raise enough money to create a replicable model.

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Through an example such as this, I seek to highlight how the core team was not necessarily blind to the power we held. Rather we were constantly negotiating how we held power, through the dynamics of our working relationship, within the context of our broader lives and in conversation with the wider ecological uncertainties. Following Agid (2016) I suggest that within infrastructuring our ‘positions are dynamically situated, in constant movement in relationship to the multiple infrastructures in and through which we and others work together’ (81). As a condition of my involvement in the core team, I often sought to intervene in ways that I hoped would be generative. This meant at times withholding my view or refraining from acting and then learning through experience how I might act differently next time. Within this research, I suggest that when designers engage in local infrastructuring work, above and over politically correct positions or moralistically detached stances, we need to foster ‘a love for the world, the pleasures of friendliness, trust conviviality, and companionable connection’ (Gibson-Graham 2007, 6). This speaks to similar positions held within PD, where ethics are enacted and worked out through ongoing conversations and situations, rather than abstractly applied frameworks (Light and Akama 2018). Working with our sleeves rolled up, we can begin to see that power dynamics are always shaping how we collaborate with others. It is in the messiness of collaboration, that Agid (2018)suggests that we pay ‘attention to the contradictions, differences, and open questions that emerge and become part of designing together in these complex contexts’ (17).