08 MAY 2025 (THU) 11:05-11:25

Placing Infrastructure with Science & Technology (S&T): A Case Study 

Mr WANG Zhikang 

( Supervisor: Prof Junxi Qian )

Abstract:

This research works at the intersection between urban studies on infrastructure and science and technology studies (STS). It departs from three theoretical anchors built through dialoguing three notions in urban studies on infrastructure with STS thoughts, namely the materiality, discourse and sociality of infrastructure. First, infrastructure is a category of the materialisation of the capital-science-technology (CST) triad; second, infrastructure intellectualisation is a discourse of socio-technological imaginaries; and third, infrastructure is enmeshed with internal socio-technical dynamics. It critiques that 1) the infrastructural production of space is not yet re-examined accordingly considering the CST triad materialisation; 2) infrastructure intellectualisation as a socio-technological discourse is negotiated on a quotidian basis and posts material effects, the process of which is not sufficiently interrogated; 3) the quotidian human agency in the internal socio-technical dynamics of infrastructure is less excavated. In response, this research highlights S&T mechanisms in the production of space, discursive negotiations, and internal human agency of infrastructure. The study approach is critical geographic theories of place including the Marxist “spatial fix” effect, the post-structuralist disciplinary/counter discourses and flux place-making, and the humanistic everyday embodied experience and praxis-based place. The study case is Nansha Port, one of the largest container ports worldwide, located in Guangzhou, China. Potential insights from this research are as follows. First, the (over-)accumulation and flow of each components of the CST triad as well as the intensification and loosening of their relations motivate the configuration of the infrastructural space, as evinced by the spatial re-configurations of Nansha Port in its green energy use and equipment upgrade projects amidst yard land obsoletion. Second, infrastructure intellectualisation is a process of discursive negotiation, as evinced by the top-down “smart port” and bottom-up “traditional industry” discourses and the resultant re-imagining of automation at Nansha Port. Third, infrastructure sociality and technical functionalities are mutually facilitating via embodied everyday experience and social practices, as evinced by Nansha Port’s physical, operational and economic functions and operators’ social practices being experientially catalysed. The output of this research is thus a three-dimensional conceptual frame of infrastructure place, in that the place is materially produced by the spatial fix of the CST triad, discursively negotiated by the socio-technological imaginaries and their counter narratives and experientially catalysed by the internal human agency in the socio-technical dynamics of infrastructure. This research inserts infrastructure as an experimental field for STS thoughts, while also signifies an epistemological outlook situating the “global infrastructure turn” and “technology era” as essential backgrounds both for human existence and for geographic knowledge production.