Kumar, A. orcid.org/0000-0001-7958-7083 (2024) Jugaad Infrastructure: Minor infrastructure and the messy aesthetics of everyday life. Geo: Geography and Environment, 11 (2). e00153. ISSN 2054-4049
Abstract
Jugaad is an Indian name for versatility and improvisation, a sensibility for improvisation, an ability for improvisation and an enabling of improvisation. This paper proposes the idea of Jugaad Infrastructure for versatile socio-material infrastructure arrangements that inhabit and thrive in the messy aesthetics of everyday life. It does so by extending the focus of infrastructure geographies from ‘big stuff’ to little devices such as solar lamps that gain significance when deployed in big numbers. The paper advances two ideas. First, it argues that jugaad circumvents the formal–informal boundary set by designers. By piercing this boundary, jugaad affords more fluid socio-material relationships involving infrastructures and their users. In so doing, jugaad affords versatility. Second, it develops the idea of Jugaad Infrastructure. Jugaad Infrastructure folds two things into it. First, infrastructures that are designed in ways that facilitate jugaad, albeit within firmly maintained boundaries and attempt to capitalise on people's aptitude for jugaad to take different forms, inhabit different spaces, enable different purposes and all this while somewhat retaining their shape. They are easy to maintain. This helps them travel to, function and stay in different places. In this way, small devices spread around in large numbers to become big infrastructure. Second, it represents the ensembles of fluid socio-material relationships and resources involving infrastructures and their users through which infrastructures are tailored to ‘better’ fit everyday lives and needs. Jugaad Infrastructure inhabits the liminal spaces of struggle between designers claiming jugaad as a limited practice that leads to stable innovations and users deploying unlimited jugaadas an everyday practice of socio-material flux. The paper is based on qualitative research conducted in India during 2012–2013, 2016 and 2017 using participant observations, discussions and interviews with users, entrepreneurs, market players and designers, in addition to documentary evidence from reports and websites.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Author(s). Geo: Geography and Environment published by the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | development; India; Jugaad Infrastructure; postcolonial infrastructure; solar |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > School of Geography and Planning |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 17 Sep 2024 10:46 |
Last Modified: | 17 Sep 2024 22:26 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/geo2.153 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:217260 |