Infrastructure turned suprastructure
Unpredictable materialities and visions of a Nigerian nation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2391050 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ulrika Trovalla (Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden), Eric Trovalla (Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 43-57 |
| Publication date | 2015-03-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Material Culture (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/1359183514560284 |
| OpenAlex | W2119931989 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 19 |
| References cited | 23 |
There are signs hidden in the infrastructure. In the Nigerian city of Jos, the unpredictable availability of power, fuel, water, etc. becomes a vehicle of meaning. In many settings across the globe, infrastructure is often made invisible, and the centre stage that it takes in everyday life remains unrecognized. In Jos, however, as in many African cities, the constant need to predict its flows contradicts the prefix infra (below); rather than being hidden beneath the realm of experience it is brought to the surface as a puzzle to be figured out. These explorations in turn come to reveal matters beyond the infrastructure itself. Just as diviners infer the state of the world from the stones they have thrown, reading significance out of the seeming randomness of matter, the infrastructure turns intricate questions into tangible clues. It becomes a suprastructure - a divination tool giving clues about the past, present and future of the Nigerian nation
Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Bricolage · Creatures · Divination · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Globe · Literature · Meaning (existential · Natural (archaeology · Political science · Power (physics · Reading (process · Realm · Sociology · State (computer science · Vision · Visual arts · Anthropology · Computer Science · History · Law · Urban and Rural Development Challenges · Water Governance and Infrastructure
New Ways of Working
Urban Anthropology
Négociations, mobilisations et reproduction quotidienne des infrastructures électriques à Ibadan (Nigéria)
Stock-outs! Improvisations and processes of infrastructuring in Uganda’s HIV/Aids and malaria programmes
Democracy and Administration of Social Justice in Nigeria
Infrastructures by the users for users
The possible role and position of social work as part of the arrival infrastructure
Mobile phones, gender‐based violence, and distrust in state services
Networked infrastructures and the ‘local
Infrastructure as a divination tool
Designing and domesticating an interstructure
Cohabiting commerce in a transport hub
Infrastructural frontiers
Navigating the Ocean of Suspicion
When it rains
The recalcitrance of distance
How to Mend a Fragmented City
A road to development? Rural perspectives on infrastructure maintenance in Solomon Islands
Building a legacy? Ambivalent impacts of a malaria vaccine clinical trial
Disrupted Cities
Experience and nature.
What Things Do
Signal and Noise
Civil society and the political imagination in Africa
Sorting Things Out
FlowCity
Infrastructure as a divination tool
Mobilities
Oil boom and crisis in contemporary Nigeria
Playing politics with the mobile phone in Nigeria
Pirate Towns
Never Expect Power Always
Mass mobilization and legitimation crisis in Nigeria
The Uses of Ridicule
Charismatic/Pentecostal Appropriation of Media Technologies in Nigeria and Ghana
Expectations of Modernity
The Search for Security in Muslim Northern Nigeria
People as Infrastructure
Degraded Images, Distorted Sounds
The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure
| Unique citing works | 19 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,73 |
| Citation span | 2015 - 2024 (10) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 19 |