Crafting connections – practices of infrastructuring: An ethnographic study of developing a village electricity grid in Bangladesh

Abstract

This thesis is an ethnographic study of the making of an electricity infrastructure in a Bangladeshi village. In this pilot project, employees of a Norwegian university and a Bangladeshi mobile company utilized a mobile tower as an electricity-producing hub for a solar-powered mini-grid. By using the verb-form ‘infrastructuring,’ understood as the crafting of connections between people, things, and places, the thesis explores how infrastructures are practically constituted. A central theme is the use of representations, such as sketches and monitoring systems. While such representations assist project workers and organizations in sorting out complex realities, they can also hide important issues. The thesis highlights the contradiction between a commonsense understanding of infrastructures as fixed and stable and the experience of the environment as a dynamic force pushing back into interventions. It engages the Bangla terms kacha (soft or provisional) and pakka (solid or permanent) to consider how we might develop flexible infrastructures that accommodate and even invite environmental fluctuations