ABSTRACT

The (post)colonial logics of speed and convenience are manifest in many of today’s infrastructural projects, creating what we consider to be ‘fast infrastructures’. These infrastructures create ease for some and harm for others while exacerbating social and environmental crises around the world. Addressing these crises requires, we argue, a slowing down. Enter the role of ‘slow infrastructures’. In this paper, we highlight two forms of slow infrastructure that provide possibilities for rearranging our infrastructural orientations: composting and rainwater harvesting. Drawing on fieldwork conducted throughout 2018 and 2019 in Kochi, Kerala, this research asserts that in order to do infrastructure differently, an unworking of convenience and speed is required. This unworking can be achieved through an attunement to multi-species and more-than-human relations, matched with a distributed ethic of maintenance and care. Our ethnographic examples, one from a hospital and another from a hotel, suggest that slow infrastructures can meaningfully offset the threat of disfunction and ‘urban failure’ that confronts cities increasingly marked by turbulence and uncertainty. While these examples draw from the tropics of urban South India, they offer lessons helpful to unworking the harm caused by fast infrastructures in other parts of the globe.

摘要

速度和便利性的（后）殖民逻辑在当今许多基础设施项目中都得到体现，从而创造了我们认为的“快速基础设施”。这些基础设施为某些人带来便利，而对其他人则造成伤害，同时加剧了世界各地的社会和环境危机。我们认为，应对这些危机需要放慢脚步。输入“慢速基础架构”的角色。在本文中，我们重点介绍了两种形式的慢速基础设施，它们为重新安排基础设施的发展方向提供了可能性：堆肥和雨水收集。这项研究基于2018年和2019年在喀拉拉邦高知进行的实地考察，断言，为了以不同的方式进行基础设施建设，必须不兼顾便利性和速度。可以通过协调多种物种和多于人的关系以及分布式的维护和护理道德来实现这种不工作。我们的人种学实例（一个来自医院，另一个来自酒店）表明，缓慢的基础设施可以有效地抵消因动荡和不确定性而面临的城市面临的功能障碍和“城市失败”的威胁。这些示例来自印度南部城市的热带地区，但它们提供了一些经验教训，有助于消除全球其他地区因快速基础架构而造成的危害。这表明，缓慢的基础设施可以有效抵消因动荡和不确定性而日益严重的城市所面临的功能障碍和“城市崩溃”的威胁。这些示例来自印度南部城市的热带地区，但它们提供了一些经验教训，有助于消除全球其他地区因快速基础架构而造成的危害。这表明，缓慢的基础设施可以有效抵消因动荡和不确定性而日益严重的城市所面临的功能障碍和“城市崩溃”的威胁。这些示例来自印度南部城市的热带地区，但它们提供了一些经验教训，有助于消除全球其他地区因快速基础架构而造成的危害。