Infrastructuring as a planetary phenomenon : timescale separation and causal closure in more-than-human systems

Szerszynski, Bronislaw (2022) Infrastructuring as a planetary phenomenon : timescale separation and causal closure in more-than-human systems. Historical Social Research, 47 (4). 193–214.

Text (Szerszynski - Infrastructuring as a planetary phenomenon preprint)
Szerszynski_Infrastructuring_as_a_planetary_phenomenon_preprint.pdf - Accepted Version
Available under License Creative Commons Attribution.
Download (292kB)

Abstract

Building on recent work identifying how the infrastructures of human social and economic life themselves depend on the “natural infrastructure” of biogeochemical systems, I explore the idea that infrastructuring—involving causal relations between subsystems operating at different timescales—might be a strategy widely adopted by matter undergoing self-organization under planetary conditions. I analyze the concept of infrastructure as it is used to describe features of the human “technosphere” and identify the importance of a difference in timescales between supporting and supported structures and processes. I explore some examples of how the wider planet might be said to engage in timescale-distancing and infrastructuring, focusing, in particular, on examples from the hydrosphere and biosphere. I then turn to the question of how to explain infrastructuring, developing a neocybernetic account of infrastructuring as involving the separation of a system into subsystems at different timescales in mutual but asymmetrical causal relations. I conclude by exploring the implications of this approach for the way we think about planets in general and the human technosphere.