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Inverting Ecological Infrastructures: How Temporality Structures the Work of Sustainability
Die Umkehrung ökologischer Infrastrukturen: Wie die Zeitlichkeit Nachhaltigkeitsarbeit strukturiert
[journal article]
Abstract All conceptions of sustainability presuppose a temporally distributed mode of work, diagnosing past failures to address problems of the future via actions in the present. Sustainability infrastructures necessarily operate along timescales much longer than those that usually inform design and policy ... view more
All conceptions of sustainability presuppose a temporally distributed mode of work, diagnosing past failures to address problems of the future via actions in the present. Sustainability infrastructures necessarily operate along timescales much longer than those that usually inform design and policy work. Since sustainability work demands temporal negotiation, competing visions of sustainability can be distinguished by the ways they relate the past, present, and future to the categories of the human and the natural. Reviewing the history of oyster fishing in the Chesapeake Bay since 1880, we show that infrastructures are sites where sustainability’s temporal dissonance is negotiated, terming this infrastructural articulation work. These activities are simultaneously supported by sustainability infrastructure and hindered by infrastructures’ inherent elusiveness, accretion, and perdurance. We conclude that a deeper understanding of infrastructures and infrastructural articulation work are crucial for the complex negotiation of temporal dissonance that sustainability demands.... view less
Keywords
sustainability; ecology; infrastructure; human-environment relationship
Classification
Ecology, Environment
Sociology of Science, Sociology of Technology, Research on Science and Technology
Free Keywords
Critical infrastructure studies; temporality; ecological management; Oyster; Chesapeake Bay; articulation work
Document language
English
Publication Year
2022
Page/Pages
p. 215-241
Journal
Historical Social Research, 47 (2022) 4
Issue topic
Ruptures, Transformations, Continuities: Rethinking Infrastructures and Ecology
ISSN
0172-6404
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed