Off the Grid: Relational Infrastructures for Fragile Futures

建立有复原力的基础设施以满足人类基本需求是我们时代面临的一项重大环境、经济和政治挑战。面对财政和生态危机，卫生和能源基础设施将是什么样的问题，特别是对我们未来的福祉具有重大意义。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全球大不相同的背景下，人们与基础设施电网的连接-无论是字面上的（与电线、电缆和铁塔的连接）还是比喻上的（与计划的国家服务提供系统的连接）-都不再被视为提供健康和能源的可持续或可实现的模式。从苏格兰的替代性生活空间，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，获得健康和能源的分散模式正在扩散，这些模式并不依赖于人们与电网的连接，而是依赖于他们的社交网络的能力。“脱离电网”的存在、生活和维持生命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方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“弹性”等概念在社会科学领域受到批评，英国皇家科学院需要开发新的概念，以理论化“离网”基础设施，以及传播这些概念的新方法，使关键利益相关者能够访问和部署这些概念。在18个月的时间内，该项目将在三个完全不同的地方建立三个健康和能源基础设施的案例研究，想象和经历的都是远离网络的这是将所有基础设施理论化为关系型基础设施（即，作为构建和维持人类生活的人、技术和物质环境之间的历史互动和交换的复合体）的经验起点，也是探索何种关系可能构成未来健康和能源基础设施的经验起点。通过比较“离网”生活在财富（苏格兰），增长（印度）和贫困（巴布亚新几内亚）的背景下，该项目旨在鼓励学者和政策制定者考虑可以在英国从其他全球背景下学到什么，并超越发达国家和发展中国家的社会和经济研究之间的传统界限。在这样做的过程中，该项目将改变我们在社会科学中谈论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一个主要新对象。它们是公平的，还是使不平等永久化？“离网”生活如何仍然依赖于电网的运输、电信和治理？我们的案例研究可以告诉我们什么基础设施在危机时期如何运作？该项目通过以无障碍的方式可视化和交流理论和研究，为产生影响铺平了道路。两名人类学家和一名数字理论家之间的合作是该项目的核心。与从业艺术家和信息图表记者的合作将从一开始就纳入该项目。视觉工具和人类学可视化的结果是为了使“关系基础设施”的想法提供给卫生和能源政策制定者，因为他们寻求新的概念工具来规划脆弱的未来。

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.