Abstract:
Urban infrastructures and networks in the Global South are known to grow and function
on self-help, privatised, and informal systems and practices. The urbanites generate a range
of improvisational strategies to combat ‘normal’ infrastructural disruption. Drawing on
ethnographic data, this paper examines how the urban middle-class Bangladeshi households
produce their own improvisational strategies and practices to sustain and continue to
function in everyday life with regular power cuts. In examining the processes and practices
of improvisation and coping this paper contributes to the new ‘infrastructural turn’ (Amin
2014) in the social sciences. In particular, it highlights ways in which infrastructure is done
differently in the Global South.
