Infrastructures of Society, Anthropology of

The concept of infrastructure refers to the embedded, often invisible technical support structures that help to deliver services to a population or organization, most commonly water, energy, and information. Infrastructures mediate human interaction and shape social organization. Anthropology has developed a relational perspective on infrastructures analyzing them as the ongoing interweaving of embodied social and political choices, moral orders, and technical networks. This approach has much to offer for anthropologists, because it is largely based on ethnographic research, shows a deep commitment to materiality as practice and provides a productive way of thinking through the changing relations of center and periphery. It is an area of research with important intersections into the information sciences and urban studies.