Infrastructural Being

Seen through the lens of dwelling, infrastructures offer a way into the present-day naturecultural world, a perspective taken up in environmental humanities and social sciences. The idea of naturecultures highlights how untidy lived experience is and how social and biophysical elements cannot be pulled apart. On this view, what appears natural is also cultural, and the reverse is equally true.

The author builds on this framework to examine the tangled ways people engage with infrastructure, a condition he calls infrastructural being. The book contributes to new debates on infrastructure in environmental social sciences and humanities. It draws attention to the distinctive character of modern dwelling and to familiar yet easily overlooked forms of connection between people and nature.

Beyond analysis, the book offers tools for imagining how things could be otherwise. It responds to the pressing need to develop new kinds of human-nature relations during a period of environmental upheaval.