The Nordic Africa Institute – Publications

nai.se
Change search
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf
Infrastructure turned suprastructure: unpredictable materialities and visions of a Nigerian nation
The Nordic Africa Institute, Urban Dynamics.ORCID iD: 0000-0002-1855-965x
The Nordic Africa Institute, Urban Dynamics.
2015 (English)In: Journal of material culture, ISSN 1359-1835, E-ISSN 1460-3586, Vol. 20, no 1, p. 43-57Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]

There are signs hidden in the infrastructure. In the Nigerian city of Jos, the unpredictable availability of power, fuel, water, etc. becomes a vehicle of meaning. In many settings across the globe, infrastructure is often made invisible, and the centre stage that it takes in everyday life remains unrecognized. In Jos, however, as in many African cities, the constant need to predict its flows contradicts the prefix infra (below); rather than being hidden beneath the realm of experience it is brought to the surface as a puzzle to be figured out. These explorations in turn come to reveal matters beyond the infrastructure itself. Just as diviners infer the state of the world from the stones they have thrown, reading significance out of the seeming randomness of matter, the infrastructure turns intricate questions into tangible clues. It becomes a suprastructure - a divination tool giving clues about the past, present and future of the Nigerian nation.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2015. Vol. 20, no 1, p. 43-57
Keywords [en]
African urbanity, anthropology, infrastructure, materiality, Nigeria, Jos, urban environment
National Category
Social Anthropology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:nai:diva-1894DOI: 10.1177/1359183514560284OAI: oai:DiVA.org:nai-1894DiVA, id: diva2:784108
Available from: 2015-01-28 Created: 2015-01-28 Last updated: 2020-05-20Bibliographically approved

Open Access in DiVA

No full text in DiVA

Other links

Publisher's full texthttp://mcu.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/11/27/1359183514560284.abstract

Search in DiVA

By author/editor
Trovalla, UlrikaTrovalla, Eric
By organisation
Urban Dynamics
In the same journal
Journal of material culture
Social Anthropology

Search outside of DiVA

GoogleGoogle Scholar

doi
urn-nbn

Altmetric score

doi
urn-nbn
Total: 1574 hits
CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

Direct link
Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf