ABSTRACT
Charlotte Johnson (0000-0002-7340-1601)
Energy infrastructure materialises social institutions within urban fabric. This chapter analyses Belgrade’s district heating system with an STS lens to identify the politics and social practices it shapes. The heating system was developed during the Yugoslav era under a rationale of modern socialist living. Today it is going through a process of liberalisation in line with Serbia’s new political economy. This change means reworking the territories and subjectivities of the system through valves, meters and contracts. Using ethnographic research, the difficulty in realising these changes is shown, and the conflicts they create with existing social values and practices are discussed. The consumer sovereignty promised through reform proves hard to materialise amidst the technical and social norms of the existing infrastructure.
