Making Light Work

Infrastructures and Their Many Publics

Bibliographic Data

ID5337917
AuthorsJohn Green (0000-0002-2315-5326, Wellcome Centre for Cultures & Environments of Health, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK), Mike Michael (0000-0001-9272-2294, Department of Social and Political Science, Philosophy and Anthropology, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK, corresponding author), Rebecca Steinbach (0000-0002-5674-2455, AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, Washington, DC, USA), Phil Edwards (0000-0003-4431-8822, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine)
Year2025
Publication date2025-01-09
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueScience Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/01622439241309978
OpenAlexW4406217112
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited36

This article explores the multiplicity of publics that are enacted in relation to infrastructures. We take the case of street lighting infrastructure in the UK in 2013/4, at a point when innovations in light emitting diode (LED) and smart technologies were making the infrastructuring of street lighting newly visible. Multifarious, emergent and recursive publics were variously enacted by lighting professionals, researchers, and publics themselves as part of this infrastructuring. We argue that these publics were constituted vis-à-vis other actors and entities and coalesced around configurations and attributions of knowledge, uncertainty and ignorance. "Supra-publics" indexed long-standing local knowledge gained by lighting professionals. "Occasioned publics" vis-à-vis technocratic expertise emerged when infrastructures became newly visible as lighting professionals (or researchers) consulted publics. "Citizen publics", mobilized vis-à-vis governance, carefully marshalled experiential knowledge alongside newly acquired technical knowledge. These categories are neither comprehensive nor mutually exclusive, and their contours have shifted since our fieldwork as domains of knowledge and ignorance have changed. However, they are indicative of the multiplicity of publics that are part of lighting infrastructure in liberal states, and suggestive of ways in which publics are not stable entities, but rather in constant flux, as infrastructuring makes light work

Business · Corporate governance · Environmental ethics · Experiential learning · Ignorance · Pedagogy · Political science · Public relations · Publics · Sociology · Technocracy · Engineering · Impact of Light on Environment and Health · Law · Urban Planning and Governance · Water Governance and Infrastructure

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access