There is one section in this reading that has potential to aid in our framing. At one point, the author, Shannon Mattern, discusses slow disasters and how the lack of repair can lead to this. It wasn’t large scale things like a bridge collapse, but small, nearly indiscernible domino effects. Mattern uses the example of a broken washing machine that can no longer filter out bacteria. Because of this, household members can get sick. There’s a nearly endless amount of examples we can use when discussing maintenance and repair. This article does not mention disruptions directly, but I am certain that we can use this framework of slow disasters due to disrepair and relate it to disruptions.
The authors Slow Emergencies Anderson, Grove, Kearnes, and Rickards build upon two literatures that had not been combined until this piece. They combine study of emergency powers (the way in governments are constantly identifying, defining, preparing for, and regulating lives for emergencies) and feminist, postcolonial, and environmental jsutice scholars. By doing so, they have concluded that constant governing through emergencies have ignored the gradual impacts of previous emergencies or disasters affecting marginalized people. They use the example of nuclear tests on Native Australians and how they are facing significantly higher rates of cancer. They build upon the concept of slow violence and slow death. Slow death is how systemic issues cause health issues in marginalized groups, leading to an early death. This can be seen when comparing life expectancy of groups in the same country. It also builds upon the concept of necropolitics, which is how structures of power determine who is worthy of living and who is not.
The main argument of Routine Infrastructuring is that by generating routine infastructing practices, people were able to build resilience in their daily lives. Infrastructure is defined as creating arrangements of organizations and actors that must be brought into alignment in order for something to be accomplished. Resilience is defined in myriad ways, but the authors use a resource based: the creative and adaptive process through which people draw on resources as a means of overcoming everyday disruption. The narrative of this text is centered around the course case studies. Each of them involve a marginalized group who experience a daily disruption for one reason or another. Author Bryan Semaan goes through their stories and explains the ways in which they have created infrastructures outside of their normal socioeconomic systems. These three case studies also serve as Semaan’s evidence, as he conducted surveys from those marginalized groups. These surveys were semi-structured life histories that explored people’s lives and asked about their practices when living in disrupted environments.