ABSTRACT
Jenny Rinkinen (0000-0002-0160-6886)
Definitions of infrastructure often emphasise material arrangements that are relatively invisible and that constitute the background or setting in which diverse practices are enacted. By contrast, other forms of service provision, such as small-scale heating with wood (log burning) depend on a dynamic bundle of inter-related social practices, each involving distinctive material, spatial and temporal arrangements. This chapter considers various scales and rhythms of heating with wood, and the different forms of work involved. It shows that changes in provision and in the organisation of consumption are bound up with social and cultural conventions and in related divisions and allocations of time and labour. This analysis identifies different ways of valuing infrastructural provision, and argues that the significance of qualities like those of flexibility and convenience are established not in the abstract, but always in relation to other aspects of daily life.
