Off the Grid: Relational Infrastructures for Fragile Futures

建立有弹性的基础设施以满足人类的基本需求是我们这个时代面临的重大环境、经济和政治挑战。面对财政危机和生态危机，健康和能源的基础设施将是什么样子的问题尤其对我们未来的福祉具有重要意义。然而，我们对基础设施的看法正在发生变化。在财富、经济增长和长期贫困的不同全球背景下，人们与基础设施电网的连接--无论是字面上的(连接到电线、电缆和塔架的)还是比喻的(连接到规划的、国家服务提供系统的)--不再被视为提供卫生和能源的可持续或可实现的模式。从苏格兰的另类生活空间，到印度的社会企业家空间，再到巴布亚新几内亚的国家脆弱性空间，我们发现，获取医疗和能源的去中心化模式正在泛滥，这些模式的前提不是人们与电网的连接，而是他们的社交网络的能力。脱离电网生活、生活和维持生活的想法已经变得非常有影响力，它动员了人们，推动了政策，塑造了政治，吸引了资金。然而，迫切需要对决定这些地区基础设施成败的关系以及这些基础设施关系的包容性和可持续性进行进一步的实证研究。随着社会科学领域对“弹性”等概念的批评，该研究院需要为“离网”基础设施的理论化开发新的概念，并开发新的沟通方式，使关键的利益相关者能够访问和部署这些概念。在18个月的时间表上，该项目将在三个截然不同的地方建立三个关于医疗和能源基础设施的案例研究，这三个地方的建设、想象和体验都是离网的。这是一个经验起点，可以将所有基础设施理论化为关系(即，作为人、技术和构成并维持人类生活的物质环境之间历史互动和交流的综合体)，并探索什么样的关系可能构成未来的健康和能源基础设施。通过比较生活在富裕(苏格兰)、经济增长(印度)和贫困(巴布亚新几内亚)环境下的“离网”生活，该项目旨在鼓励学者和政策制定者思考英国可以从其他全球环境中学到什么，并超越发达国家和发展中国家的社会和经济研究的传统界限。通过这样做，该项目将改变我们谈论社会科学基础设施的概念词汇，并使“关系基础设施”成为社会科学研究的主要新对象。推动我们进行比较的问题包括：是什么让关系基础设施具有弹性或脆弱性？它们是公平的，还是会使不平等永久化？在交通、电信和治理方面，生活如何保持对电网的依赖？关于基础设施在危机时期如何运作，我们的案例研究能告诉我们什么？该项目通过以可接触的方式可视化和交流理论和研究，为我们铺设了一条产生影响的途径。两位人类学家和一位数字理论家之间的合作是该项目的核心。与资深艺术家和信息记者的合作将从一开始就融入到项目中。由此产生的可视化工具和人类学可视化的目的是让健康和能源政策制定者在寻找新的概念工具来规划脆弱的未来时，可以使用“关系基础设施”的想法。

The creation of resilient infrastructures to meet basic human needs is a major environmental, economic and political challenge for our time. Confronted with fiscal and ecological crises the question of what infrastructures for health and energy will look like, in particular, is of great significance for our future wellbeing. Yet our ideas about infrastructure are changing. Across very different global contexts of wealth, economic growth and chronic poverty the connection of people to infrastructural grids - both literally (to wires, cables and pylons) and metaphorically (to planned, national systems of service provision) - is no longer seen as a sustainable or achievable model for delivering health and energy. From spaces of alternative living in Scotland, to spaces of social entrepreneurship in India, to spaces of state fragility in Papua New Guinea we find the proliferation of de-centralised models for accessing health and energy that are not premised on the connection of people to grids but on the capacities of their social networks. The idea of being, living and sustaining life 'off the grid' has become immensely influential, mobilising people, driving policies, shaping politics and attracting finance. Yet there is an urgent need for further empirical research on the relationships that determine whether infrastructures succeed or fail in these places and how inclusive and sustainable those infrastructural relationships are. As concepts such as 'resilience' are criticised within the social sciences the academy needs to develop new concepts for theorising 'off the grid' infrastructures and new ways of communicating these concepts that makes them accessible and deployable by key stakeholders.Over its 18-month timetable this project will build up three case studies of health and energy infrastructure in three radically different places that are constructed, imagined and experienced as off-the grid. This is an empirical starting point for theorising all infrastructures as relational (that is, as the complex of historic interactions and exchanges between people, technologies and the material environment that structure and sustain human life) and for exploring what kinds of relationships may constitute future infrastructures for health and energy. By comparing 'off the grid' living in contexts of wealth (Scotland), growth (India) and poverty (Papua New Guinea) this project seeks to encourage academics and policy makers to consider what can be learnt in the UK from other global contexts and to transcend traditional boundaries between the social and economic study of developed and developing countries. In doing so the project will transform our conceptual vocabularies for talking about infrastructure across the social sciences and make 'relational infrastructure' a major new object of social scientific enquiry.The questions driving our comparisons include: what makes relational infrastructures resilient or fragile? Are they fair or do they perpetuate inequalities? How does life 'off the grid' remain dependent on grids for transportation, telecommunications, and governance? What can our case studies tell us about how infrastructures operate in times of crisis?The project lays out a pathway to impact by visualising and communicating theory and research in accessible ways. A collaboration between two anthropologists and a digital theorist lies at the heart of the project. Collaborations with practising artists and infographic journalists will be built into the project from the outset. The visual tools and anthropological visualisations that result are intended to make the idea of 'relational infrastructure' available to health and energy policy makers as they seek new conceptual tools to plan for fragile futures.