Anthropology

Democracy's Infrastructure: Techno-Politics and Protest after Apartheid

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Published:
Oct 25, 2016
Copyright:
2017
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In the past decade, South Africa’s 鈥渕iracle transition鈥� has been interrupted by waves of protests in relation to basic services such as water and electricity. Less visibly, the post-apartheid period has witnessed widespread illicit acts involving infrastructure, including the nonpayment of service charges, the bypassing of metering devices, and illegal connections to services. Democracy鈥檚 Infrastructure shows how such administrative links to the state became a central political terrain during the antiapartheid struggle and how this terrain persists in the post-apartheid present. Focusing on conflicts surrounding prepaid water meters, Antina von Schnitzler examines the techno-political forms through which democracy takes shape.

Von Schnitzler explores a controversial project to install prepaid water meters in Soweto鈥攐ne of many efforts to curb the nonpayment of service charges that began during the antiapartheid struggle鈥攁nd she traces how infrastructure, payment, and technical procedures become sites where citizenship is mediated and contested. She follows engineers, utility officials, and local bureaucrats as they consider ways to prompt Sowetans to pay for water, and she shows how local residents and activists wrestle with the constraints imposed by meters. This investigation of democracy from the perspective of infrastructure reframes the conventional story of South Africa鈥檚 transition, foregrounding the less visible remainders of apartheid and challenging readers to think in more material terms about citizenship and activism in the postcolonial world.

Democracy鈥檚 Infrastructure examines how seemingly mundane technological domains become charged territory for struggles over South Africa鈥檚 political transformation.

Awards and Recognition

  • Honorable Mention for the 2017 APLA Book Prize, Association for Political and Legal Anthropology