Hi Tom: In the research communities I inhabit the meaning that would be attached to “critical infrastructure studies” is “studies of critical infrastructure” not “critical studies of infrastructure”. Further, “critical infrastructure” typically concerns "critical national infrastructure”, such as the electricity grid - see http://www.cpni.gov.uk/about/cni/ or on your side of the Atlantic - https://www.dhs.gov/what-critical-infrastructure As regards the word “infrastructure”, here is a summary explanation that I and my computer science colleagues have used: •Infrastructure is by definition reusable by different individuals/organizations for different purposes on different occasions. •Not all of these uses are known to, or even the concern of, the designer(s) of the infrastructure who must create something which will respond to and support uses that have not yet been conceived. •Infrastructures need to be capacity engineered - so that the amount of resource can be changed to meet current and expected demand. •Over-deployment endangers the supplier, under-deployment frustrates the user. •One organization’s system often becomes another organization’s infrastructure. Cheers Brian
On 23 Aug 2016, at 22:42, Thomas Haigh <thomas.haigh@gmail.com> wrote:
I don’t think critical adds a whole lot to “infrastructure studies.” It has some usefulness in formulations like “critical management studies” (a thing in Northern Europe but no so much in the US) as management scholarship is usually uncritical in every sense of the word. So “critical” demarcates a scholarly community deliberately taking a unorthodox approaches to challenge the assumptions of the field. http://www.criticalmanagement.org/content/about-cms
But science studies, STS, media studies, etc. manage to embrace a variety of socially and culturally informed perspectives without their practitioners needing to add the “critical” in front of them. Adding “critical” might be seen as a challenge to those currently embracing “infrastructure studies” as a scholarly identity. There’s also the question of whether “critical” means critical as in “critical thinking” or as in “critical theory,” and while critical theory certainly has a place among other approaches in the study of infrastructure not everyone would feel comfortable with the suggestion that it should be elevated over approaches grounded in STS, history, sociology, anthropology, etc.
Best wishes,
Tom
From: Members [mailto:members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org] On Behalf Of Lori Emerson Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2016 1:39 PM To: Paul N. Edwards <pne@umich.edu> Cc: Dag Spicer <dspicer@computerhistory.org>; members@lists.sigcis.org Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Call for Ideas!
Dear all, I just wanted to thank you for sending in these great resources for infrastructure studies - I came across the term "critical infrastructure studies" a couple months ago and got quite excited about how it seemed more expansive and more useful for describing my projects on labs and the pre-history of the internet than either "media archaeology" or just "media studies." But now I wonder what the extra "critical" denotes since there's a somewhat well established field already of I.S.? Any thoughts?
yours, Lori
On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 11:43 AM, Paul N. Edwards <pne@umich.edu> wrote:
Dag, here’s a partial list. I’ll be curious to hear what others might add.
Bowker & Star, Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences
Simon & Marvin, Splintering Urbanism — kind of a giant lit review, mostly focused on urban physical infrastructure but with some attention to digital
Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming
Edwards et al., Understanding Infrastructure: Dynamics, Tensions, and Design (NSF report with some lit review)
Starosielski, The Undersea Network
Check the books in my Infrastructures book series, co-edited with Geof Bowker - e.g. Larry Busch, Standards: Recipes for Reality
Also this very recent paper on platforms vs. infrastructures - not sure it counts as “canonical”!
Best,
Paul
On Aug 22, 2016, at 16:20 , Dag Spicer <dspicer@computerhistory.org> wrote:
Can anyone suggest some canonical and effective texts in Infrastructure Studies?
Thanks!
Dag -- Dag Spicer Senior Curator Computer History Museum Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 1401 North Shoreline Boulevard Mountain View, CA 94043-1311
Tel: +1 650 810 1035 Fax: +1 650 810 1055
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-- Lori Emerson Associate Professor | Director, Media Archaeology Lab Department of English and Intermedia Arts, Writing, and Performance University of Colorado at Boulder Hellems 101, 226 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0226 loriemerson.net | mediaarchaeologylab.com _______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
— School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 URL = http://www.ncl.ac.uk/computing/staff/profile/brian.randell