Following the wires: sensing socio-material practices of everyday electricity supply in post-conflict Greater Beirut.

追踪电线：感知冲突后大贝鲁特日常电力供应的社会物质实践。

基本信息

批准号：
AH/N00812X/1
负责人：
Daniele Rugo
金额：
$ 9.86万
依托单位：
Brunel University London
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2016
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2016 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=AH%2FN00812X%2F1
关键词：
Following wires sensing socio material

项目摘要

The research explores the consequences of conflicts on electricity infrastructures in Beirut. The impacts on electricity services of the violence and unrest that have affected the city since the beginning of the civil war in 1975 have forced families and individuals to invent new strategies to bring energy to their homes and shops. Informal systems and networks of electricity provision have profoundly altered the urban environment: electricity cables, generators and fuse boxes are now an ubiquitous element of the cityscape. The need to gain access to electricity and to secure stable supply have become part of everyday life and led to new practices and ways of living. Through the evocative power of video this research project follows the wires that crosscut the skyline and buildings of Beirut's neighbourhoods. In visually doing so, the project will ground the electricity cables along the lives of the persons and families it connects. By telling the story of the electricity infrastructure and the everyday responses to its failures the project aims to make sense of the lived and material legacy of the conflict. Emphasising the importance of basic infrastructures, the project uses the synthetic power of video, together with ethnographic and sociological accounts, to show through the voices and buildings of Beirut how conflicts shape cities and change how people live and make decisions. As such, research involves formal and informal interviews with residents and other stakeholders in Beirut, biographic accounts and participant observation to capture the everyday experiences of living with power outages in the city and the different strategies adopted to maintain electricity services in homes.In the early 1960s, a programme for the universalisation of services and infrastructure - including electricity - began in Lebanon, spearheaded by the then president Fouad Chehab, culminating in the creation of Électricité du Liban in 1964. Since then, violence and political unrest in Lebanon have upset that effort and reversed the trend, resulting in the debilitation of services and the prevalence of power outages and elongated blackouts. Since the civil war (1975) infrastructure provision has been used as a political weapon, resulting in significant disruptions and changing the nature of provision of electricity. The following years of reconstruction and rehabilitation policies (new infrastructural work) and the management of networks policies (fees collections, theft repression) have added new layers of spatial and social differentiation. Military attacks on power plants and the resulting damage of the electricity grid during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict have further diminished the capacity of power production, leading to an increase of the shortage at the national and urban scale. The aggravation of the already tensed conditions of supply makes it compulsory for households to rely on alternative means of provision. By focusing on electricity supplies the research project aims to show how the disruption of services is not only the result of technical vulnerability but reveals social, political and sectarian fragmentation caused by conflicts over the years.

该研究探讨了冲突对贝鲁特电力基础设施的影响自 1975 年内战开始以来，暴力和骚乱对这座城市的电力服务造成了影响，迫使家庭和个人制定新的战略，为贝鲁特提供能源。他们的家庭和商店的非正式供电系统和网络深刻地改变了城市环境：电缆、发电机和保险丝盒现已成为城市景观中无处不在的元素。已经成为日常生活的一部分，并带来了新的实践和生活方式，该研究项目沿着横切贝鲁特社区天际线和建筑物的电线，在视觉上将电缆接地。通过讲述电力基础设施的故事以及对其故障的日常反应，该项目旨在了解冲突的生活和物质遗产的重要性。该项目利用视频的综合力量，结合人种学和社会学的叙述，通过贝鲁特的声音和建筑来展示冲突如何塑造城市并改变人们的生活和决策方式。因此，研究涉及对居民和其他人的正式和非正式访谈。贝鲁特的利益相关者通过传记叙述和参与者观察来捕捉城市停电生活的日常经历，以及为维持家庭电力服务而采取的不同策略。 20 世纪 60 年代初，一项服务和基础设施普及计划 - 包括电力 - 开始于黎巴嫩由时任总统福阿德·切哈布 (Fouad Chehab) 领导，最终于 1964 年创建了黎巴嫩电力公司 (Électricité du Liban)。此后，黎巴嫩的暴力和政治动荡打乱了这一努力并扭转了这一趋势，导致服务衰弱和权力盛行自内战（1975 年）以来，基础设施供应一直被用作政治武器，造成了严重的中断并改变了接下来几年的电力供应性质。 2006 年以色列战争期间，重建和恢复政策（新的基础设施工作）以及网络政策管理（收费、打击盗窃）增加了新的空间和社会分化层次。 -真主党冲突进一步削弱了电力生产能力，导致国家和城市范围内的电力短缺加剧。本已紧张的供电条件进一步恶化，迫使家庭不得不依赖其他替代方式。通过关注电力供应，该研究项目旨在表明服务中断不仅是技术脆弱性的结果，而且揭示了多年来冲突造成的社会、政治和宗派分裂。