WHY STUDY INFRASTRUCTURES?

In recent years, infrastructures have captured the attention of researchers from diverse social science disciplines. Many anthropologists, architects, geographers, sociologists, environmental studies scholars and urban researchers have begun to take infrastructures

“more seriously,” either by directly focusing on them or designing research that is heavy informed by built structures otherwise neglected in their mundane invisibility. It is certainly not the first time that dams, roads and airports are highlighted in research articles, dissertations and books written by social scientists. What distinguishes the contemporary interest from earlier examples is an analytical effort to bring infrastructures to the foreground rather than treating them as background information or not ‘a given’.

Influenced by science and technology studies, the current focus on infrastructures seeks to find fresh and revealing perspectives in the “imbrication of infrastructures and human organization” (Star, 1999: 379). Studying infrastructures should not be a naïve involvement in empiricism; it is an interest in the “complex and contingent contractedness of techno-systems” (Ferguson, 2012: 558). More than being mere backdrops, or systems of substrates performing an assigned function (Ibid: 380), infrastructures are assemblages of multiples

85 pieces, an amalgamation of technological, political and financial techniques (Larkin, 2013:

330). In this sense, what is studied through an inquiry into infrastructures is not a thing; it is always a relationship (Star, 1999: 379, citing Bateson, 1978: 249). While energy is central to my research as an emergent form of rationality, the real potent of techniques of governance become discernable in the concreteness of physical structures. My emphasis on small hydro is motivated precisely by the unexpected ability of this infrastructure to bring together divergent and often conflicting relations, ideas, actors and geographies.

This is not to suggest, however, that small hydro developments (or infrastructures in general) are a seamless fabric embracing and concealing difference and conflict in perfection. To the contrary, infrastructures eventually (sometimes expectedly) fail. When they perform, more often than not they perform selectively, rendering certain populations and geographies worthwhile while marginalizing others in disconnection and abjection (Anand, 2012; Rodger and O’Neill, 2012).

Similar to their socially stratifying effect, some infrastructures serve certain communities at the expense of others. As Star aptly puts it “one person’s infrastructure is other person’s difficulty” (1999: 380). This is particularly valid for infrastructures that heavily depend on extractive techniques. The provision end of an infrastructure rarely resembles its extractive end. Energy infrastructures in particular expand over multiple locations and perform diverging functions at different scales. The immanent threat of climate change and the technologies proposed to mitigate its effects attest to the scalar challenges of energy infrastructures. Howe et al. point to the paradox of infrastructures in that they “both

86 mitigate and magnify precarity in the Anthropocene” (2016: 555). Significantly, this paradox is not between different and competing forms of infrastructures; the same infrastructure could produce different environmental outcomes at different scales. While renewable energy infrastructures offer solutions to alleviate some of the problems caused by more conventional carbon-based energy infrastructures, their success at the global scale will eventually be based on how and to what extent they are implemented on a local scale (Boyer, 2012). Given that small hydropower plants contribute to global climate mitigation perspectives and implementations as a carbon-free renewable alternative, we must interrogate whether they are perceived as such in the valleys and villages in which they are being built.

Fortunately, the contemporary literature on infrastructures is increasingly cognizant of uneven geographical development and the utilization of built technologies. While they share a great deal in common, scholars acknowledge that infrastructures in the global South perform differently than their counterparts in the global North, if they perform or exist at all (Howe et al., 2016). The better-life promise of infrastructures, for the most part, is still captivating in the global South. The affective allure, or what Harvey and Knox call the

“enchantment” of infrastructures, is alive and well in the parts of the world yet to enjoy the benefits of development. What is interesting about the infrastructures in the global South, however, is not their lack (in fact, some metropoles of the global South use top-notch technological systems, infrastructure in many parts of the post-industrial world are prone to decay). Rather, the variations in infrastructural implementation are characterized by innovative forms of translation (adaptation of infrastructures to local culture and

87 geography) and doubling (utilization of infrastructures for alternative functions) (Latour, 1993; Larkin, 2013). Comparing Turkey’s small hydro boom with theır counterparts throughout the world illustrates that the real significance of infrastructures unfolds in their local context as they often fulfill different functions than they are built to serve.

Another aspect of infrastructures regularly emphasized in the literature is the ideological load they carry. In his work on contemporary Soviet urban infrastructure and architecture, Humphrey (2005) reminds us that ideology is a form of political practice manifested in material objects as much as it is inscribed in texts and speeches. Infrastructures—the way they are constructed, distributed, function—reveal a great deal about state formation and power. In fact, more than being a mere material embodiment of state authority, some infrastructures construct state spaces by drawing new landscapes and transforming the old (Brenner and Elden, 2009; Harvey and Knox, 2012; Rodgers and O’Neill, 2012). While the ideological messages infrastructures convey rarely disseminate without becoming lost in translation—meaning that their ideological massages have certain limits— (Harvey and Knox, 2012), as collectively experienced commonly shared spaces, infrastructures often reflect a sense of publicness despite their socio-ecological failures.

The field of public infrastructures is changing at an alarming pace undermining their public value. Emerging markets invest in large scale projects at an unprecedented rate while infrastructure is undergoing a revival in the global North as a part of post-crisis stimulus efforts. Dubbed as “the biggest investment boom in human history,” approximately $ 6-9 trillion is spent on large-scale infrastructure projects annually, amounting to 8 percent of

88 total global GDP (Lyvbjerg, 2014). While some projects are funded, constructed and owned by the public, many of today’s infrastructures are private, complicating the public qualities of them. This chapter specifically addresses this tension embedded in private infrastructures and questions how state authority and the publicness of infrastructures become a matter of negotiation under particular market conditions and in light of speculation.

3.2 SMALL IS THE NEW LARGE: REVIVAL OF SMALL