TY - JOUR

T1 - Infrastructuring as a planetary phenomenon

T2 - timescale separation and causal closure in more-than-human systems

AU - Szerszynski, Bronislaw

PY - 2022/12/23

Y1 - 2022/12/23

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - infrastructure

KW - infrastructuring

KW - timescales

KW - neocybernetics

KW - second-order cybernetics

KW - closure to efficient causation

KW - autopoiesis

KW - planetary social thought

U2 - 10.12759/hsr.47.2022.44

DO - 10.12759/hsr.47.2022.44

M3 - Journal article

VL - 47

SP - 193

EP - 214

JO - Historical Social Research

JF - Historical Social Research

IS - 4

ER -