Seminar: BA: The Politics of Infrastructure: Power, Materiality and the Everyday - Details

General information

Course name	Seminar: BA: The Politics of Infrastructure: Power, Materiality and the Everyday
Subtitle	Lehrende: Olga Bostan
Course number	BA: SE:P/R
Semester	SoSe 2026
Current number of participants	32
expected number of participants	35
Home institute	Ethnologie/Kulturvergleichende Soziologie
Courses type	Seminar in category Offizielle Lehrveranstaltungen
First date	Thursday, 09.04.2026 16:15 - 17:45, Room: (Seminar für Ethnologie/Seminarraum)
Lehrsprache(n)	Deutsch
ECTS points	5

Lehrende

• Olga Bostan

Rooms and times

(Seminar für Ethnologie/Seminarraum)

Thursday: 16:15 - 17:45, weekly (14x)

Fields of study

• Lectures and Courses in English (International Studies)
• Philosophische Fakultät I - Sozialwissenschaften und historische Kulturwissenschaften > Institut für Ethnologie und Philosophie > Ethnologie > Bachelor Ethnologie 60/90

Module assignments

• Ethnologie Ethnologie90, Akkreditierungsfassung valid from WS 2019/20 > Pflichtmodule > PHI.07689.01 - Systematische Ethnologie: Politik/Recht (SE:P/R) PO2022, valid from SoSe 2023 > LV 1: Kursus (Vorlesung oder Seminar)
• Ethnologie Ethnologie60, Akkreditierungsfassung valid from WS 2019/20 > Pflichtmodule > PHI.07689.01 - Systematische Ethnologie: Politik/Recht (SE:P/R) PO2022, valid from SoSe 2023 > LV 1: Kursus (Vorlesung oder Seminar)

Comment/Description

This course examines infrastructure not as neutral technical systems, but as deeply political, embodied, and culturally embedded realities. Drawing on ethnographic methods and anthropological theory, we will explore how technical artifacts such as roads, water networks, electricity grids, centralized heating systems and digital platforms shape power, inequality, and everyday life in various global contexts. Through rich ethnographic case studies, students will investigate how infrastructure is not only built, but also lived, negotiated, and resisted. Who is included or excluded in its design and maintenance? How do people repair, bypass, or reimagine infrastructures that are broken, abandoned or imposed? We will pay close attention to the minute labor, improvisations, and affective relationships that sustain these systems in practice. In addition to theoretical discussions, we will explore the methods used to study infrastructure, focusing on the tools and approaches for investigating its often invisible or taken-for-granted aspects. By the end of the course, students will have gained critical insights into the political, social, and material dimensions of infrastructure, as well as the methodological sensitivity to study it in everyday life.