Infrastructural citizenship in post-networked contexts: hybridity in South Africa

Charlotte Lemanski

Chapter 21 in Handbook of Infrastructures and Cities, 2024, pp 323-338 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter questions how the concept and practice of infrastructural citizenship is challenged and re-shaped in an increasingly post-networked world. Despite modernist policy assumptions that infrastructural citizenship is synonymous with universal access to centralised networked infrastructure, there is growing recognition that complete ‘grid’ reliance is unrealistic and unrepresentative. This chapter explores the implications of post-networked infrastructure transitions for perceptions and practices of infrastructural citizenship. South Africa provides a pertinent example because post-apartheid governments have prioritised infrastructure-centric citizenship, with state-subsidised basic services a material representation of political rights. This illustrative case study demonstrates the hybridity of post-networked infrastructure governance, where the emergence of new state and non-state actors has significant implications for citizenship. Specifically, by promoting post-networked infrastructure sources and technologies, the state is potentially undermining the distribution capacity and quality of networked infrastructure while also legitimising a politics of uneven and differentiated citizenship that is materialised and institutionalised through infrastructure.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Environment; Geography; Sociology and Social Policy; Urban and Regional Studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781800889156.00032 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:20849_21

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com
sales@e-elgar.co.uk

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla (darrel@e-elgar.co.uk).