The ‘hairs of hope’: toward a fuller understanding of the legal, material and social infrastructure of infrastructure

The article contributes to the emerging literature on law and infrastructure by first noting that ‘the modern infrastructure ideal’ has become less relevant even in the global North, since rather than large connected networks of public utilities, public transit and other welfare-state systems taken as world leaders in many global North countries, infrastructure appears to us in the global North as a series of disconnected ‘projects’. Part of the reason for this curious appearance is that each large project often has its own credit rating and issues its own bonds.The article, which does not separate the material from the social and the legal, demonstrates that do-it-yourself or informal, inexpensive infrastructure solutions, many of which have arisen in the global South, might present a better, more timely goal for infrastructure governance than lamenting the absence of financing for major infrastructure projects of the ‘seeing like a state’ era.The article also challenges the naïve view of law held by many, which holds that the ‘secret’ of infrastructure projects is to be found in the details of the contracts awarded, which are often withheld from the public pending Freedom of Information requests. Contracts, it is argued, are only one of the dimensions of infrastructure planning and governance – along with financing and along with representations, often of future services or buildings that do not yet exist.