Session details
Organizer(s)
Mikkel Thelle (Aarhus University) and Stefan Höhne (Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut Essem)
Keywords
History of Consumption, Infrastructure, Urban Everyday Life
Abstract
As dependence on infrastructures has been growing, the entanglement between technological networks and everyday life has been still tighter. Urban citizens, officials, tourists and decision makers are increasingly interacting with clusters of infrastructure, multiplying from the roll-out of urban networks in mid-19th century to the GPS, IOT and Artificial Intelligence of the Smart City era. From a culture of public control, a splintering of these networks has happened, multiplying the actors and materialities of them on one hand. On the other, the use of them and the resources and communications they provide, is still on an explosive rise. Despite this development, the everyday use of infrastructures in urban society has not been dealed with extensively.
A key point form which to enter this complex field is through the notion of consumption. Often, use of urban provision is unclearly posited between the right of the citizen on one hand, and a service for the consumer on the other. This is one axis along which to think networked urban demand. Another is the interweaving of the everyday practice and the networked clusters of infrastucture that we as urbanites today take for granted.
Papers
The Invention of the ‘Modern’ Consumer: Appropriating Infrastructure in the Urban Everyday
Author(s)
Jan Hansen (Humboldt University)
Keywords
Consumption Infrastructure Modern History
Abstract
This paper examines how residents of Los Angeles integrated water and power supplies in their everyday life between 1890 and 1920. It does so from a history of consumption perspective. Arguing that the ‘appropriation’ of infrastructure in the urban everyday life contributed to the making of the ‘modern’ consumer, the paper helps establish the history of the use of infrastructure. This proposed conference paper explores the ‘appropriation’ of infrastructure in the everyday life. To do so, it researches the integration of supplied water and power into the daily practice of city residents between 1890 and 1920. It places particular emphasis on the question of how the consumption of water and power contributed to creating race, class, and gender identities—arguing that the ‘modern’ consumer took shape through his or her interaction with technological artifacts. Methodologically, the proposed paper uses Los Angeles as a case study. While many cities existed before the introduction of engineered water and energy networks in the late nineteenth century, Los Angeles is a significant exception. The city’s hasty growth was deeply interwoven with water and power technologies that pushed into people’s lives and changed how they worked, spent their leisure time, and raised their children. The empirical basis of this work consists of archival sources such as petitions to the city council, letters, and diaries, as well as published sources such as user manuals, advice literature, marketing materials, children’s books, and behavioral studies. Theoretically, the proposed paper suggests that infrastructure is constantly being made or unmade by consumers and producers alike. Following Bruno Latour, it highlights the material fabric of infrastructure as a means of understanding this two-sided process. Since the paper conceives of infrastructure as a subtle means of power, Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, in which power includes the efficiencies of individual self-discipline, is another significant reference point. The paper reveals that the process of becoming habituated to water and electricity was a contingent process. Consumers did not follow any scripted use of technology, rather they countered technologies with creativity. The paper conceives of such practices as rational adaptive consumption behavior, arising from particular local and material circumstances.
Welfare Landscapes as Infrastructure: Køge Bay Seaside Park and the Consumption of Leisure in Post-war Copenhagen
Author(s)
Mikkel Høghøj (National Museum of Denmark)
Keywords
Planning History, Welfare Society, History of Environment
Abstract
In this paper, I examine how urban seaside parks functioned as welfare infrastructure in post-war Copenhagen. By analysing the planning, construction and use of Køge Bay Seaside Park (Køge Bugt Strandpark) from the 1960s until the 1980s, I seek to show how welfare landscapes worked as key spaces through which the figure of the ‘welfare citizen’ became installed as a consumer of leisure. On one level, the seaside park spatialized an intricate infrastructure for leisure that included seven kilometres of sandy beaches, inland lakes and lagoons, intricate networks of biking lanes and walking paths as well as four harbours for pleasure boats. On another level, the seaside park was constructed as one of the largest land reclamation projects in Northern Europe and fundamentally reshaped the boundaries between the expanding metropolitan region of Copenhagen and the waters of Øresund. By tracing the shifting relations between infrastructure, welfare and the consumption of leisure through multiple scales and layers of the landscape, I argue that ‘welfare landscapes’ has been instrumental for the shaping and negotiations of welfare cities and, more specifically, the figure of the ‘welfare citizen’.