Off the Grid: Relational Infrastructures for Fragile Futures

2c04bd8e-2441-47ff-b847-e6888b984dfe

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ESRC
ESRC
ESRC
ESRC
ESRC

£1,000,670

Aug. 31, 2013

Aug. 31, 2015

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.

Potential Impact:
Who will benefit?
This research project will make the idea of relational infrastructure available to policy makers, practitioners and wider publics as they seek new ways to address the challenges of delivering energy and health in contexts of wealth, growth and global poverty. It will have widespread appeal to a range of stakeholder communities from beneficiaries in government, the private sector and the third sector. This research and its outputs will be of particular interest to:

(i) Policy makers in UK government (DfiD, DECC, DH).
(ii) Think tanks (Overseas Development Institute, Centre for Economic and Social inclusion, Centre for Social Justice, International Institute for Environment and Development, Forum for the Future, National Institute for Economic and Social Research, New Economics Foundation, Renewable Energy Foundation).
(iii) NGOs/INGOs working in the fields of energy and health access in India and Papua New Guinea (UNICEF, Practical Action).
(iv) In addition the research will also be of interest to journalists from news and media organisations that cover health and energy issues and are actively engaged in working to visualize social scientific research findings for their readers (The Guardian, New Statesman, Prospect, New Internationalist, Wired).

Though these stakeholders have divergent interests, each will benefit from enhanced understanding of the motives, values, and experiences of organisations outside their networks.

How will they benefit?
As researchers and policy makers in the UK Department of International Development, the Department of Energy & Climate Change and the Department of Health ask how to build future health systems (e.g. Bloom and Standing, 2008) and low carbon economies (e.g. Stern, 2006) this project provides concrete examples of the relationships on which these infrastructures will depend. This research sets out to transform the way in which government policy makers, policy researchers and advisors think about infrastructure in order to enhance their understanding of the importance of social relationships and histories for the ability of localized infrastructures to succeed. We anticipate that in the future infrastructure will be talked and written about in relational terms.

The project will also provide empirical case studies of 'off the grid infrastructures' that will encourage policy makers, researchers and advisors to question the widespread celebration of 'off the grid' resilience. In particular, we anticipate findings will demonstrate some of the ways in which 'off the grid' infrastrutures in places such as India or Scotland continue to depend on public services, and the limitations of social capital and networks in substituting for public infrastructures in places like Papua New Guinea. This will have implications both for policies in international development and for health and energy policy in the UK.

The development of new visual techniques for communicating social science research will help to transform the way in which policy makers and media organisations engage with academia. We anticipate that our visualisations will provide media outlets with novel material for publication and will encourage them to seek out further collaborations with social scientists in the future.