Dissertation Research: Ingenuity, Infrastructure, and Energy Use in Postsocialist Tanzania

耶鲁大学博士生迈克尔·德加尼将在迈克尔·麦戈文博士的指导下，研究发展中国家快速发展城市的城市居民如何从不可靠的国家机构获得基本服务，并在由短缺和不稳定定义的物质基础设施中过上日常生活。他将对坦桑尼亚主要城市中心达累斯萨拉姆的电力供应的社会和技术安排进行案例研究。随着手机、电灯和电子媒体逐渐成为达累斯萨拉姆现代生活的特征，为这些技术提供动力所需的电力变得越来越昂贵和不可靠。20年来旷日持久的新自由主义改革削弱了国家电力公用事业，消费者遭受电费上涨、有形基础设施老化和配给延长的痛苦。尽管一些人考虑使用太阳能或其他离网解决方案，但也有一些人面临被盗、盗版或篡改电表的风险，通常是通过与兼职或被裁减的国家技术人员合作来实现的，这些技术人员俗称为“斧头”。Degani将从两个来源收集数据：技术人员的创收活动和三个城市社区的电力消耗。技术人员的活动将包括财务日志，这些日志由生活史、参与者观察和对特定交易的深入案例研究而成。有关用电量的数据将包括为期一个月的能源日记、采访和参与者观察，这些家庭来自电力基础设施水平高、中、低水平的三个社区的10户家庭。这两种类型的数据将使他能够分析电气化在分布和使用方面的策略、意义和经验。这项研究将有助于在后社会主义背景下建立基础设施系统、无管制经济和城市空间和时间生产之间的关系的理论。它还将有助于理解在日益被市场模式主导的全球背景下，能源使用是如何具有文化和政治意义的。资助这项研究也支持研究生的教育。

Yale University doctoral candidate Michael Degani, supervised by Dr. Michael McGovern, will undertake research on how urban residents in rapidly growing cities in developing nations access basic services from unreliable state institutions, and fashion daily life within material infrastructures defined by shortage and instability. He will conduct a case study of the social and technical arrangements of electricity access in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's major urban center. As cellphones, lights, and electronic media come to characterize properly modern life in Dar es Salaam, the electricity needed to power these technologies has become ever more expensive and unreliable. Two decades of protracted neoliberal reform have weakened the national power utility, and consumers suffer increased tariffs, aging physical infrastructure and extended rationing. Though some contemplate solar power or other off-grid solutions, others risk theft, piracy, or meter-tampering, often through collaborations with part-time or retrenched state technicians, colloquially known as 'hatchets.' Degani will collect data from two sources: income-generating activities of technicians and electricity consumption in three urban neighborhoods. Technician activities will comprise financial logs contextualized by life histories, participant-observation and in-depth case studies of specific transactions. Data on electricity consumption will comprise month long energy diaries, interviews and participant-observation among 10 households in three neighborhoods with high, medium and low levels of electrical infrastructure. These two types of data will allow him to analyze the strategies, meanings and experience of electrification in both its distribution and use.This research will contribute to theorizing the relationship between infrastructure systems, unregulated economies and the production of urban space and time in a postsocialist setting. It will also contribute to understanding how energy use is invested with cultural and political meanings in a global context increasingly dominated by market models of delivery. Funding this research also supports the education of a graduate student