ABSTRACT
Chapter 3 investigates the ways in which infrastructures, appliances and resources are implicated in making and transforming social practices and the demands that follow. In this approach this chapter takes issue with those who treat technologies as if they were independent of the practices they enable – a tendency that pervades much of the mainstream literature. We work through two case studies as a means of illustrating the significance of these insights. The first draws on research from the UK and South East Asia to show how fridges, freezers and related energy demands are entangled in extensive infrastructures and systems of food provisioning. The second considers the changing relation between on- and offline shopping and the consequences this has for the forms of mobility involved. As well as showing how infrastructures, systems of provision, and complexes of practice change together, these examples remind us that present configurations represent one moment in an ongoing historical process.
