Higher Seminar: From modern to modest imaginary? Learning about urban water infrastructure by comparing Northern and Southern cities

Do you see any signs of an emerging modest imaginary? What types of possibilities does a modest imaginary entail? In what ways can a modest imaginary succeed or fail?  

Synopsis of the Seminar 

Modernity constitutes an imaginary that has greatly influenced how to plan water infrastructure. Large and often centrally planned water infrastructures for drinking water provision, sanitation and flood mitigation can usually be traced back to the workings of modernity as a kind of meta-framework for imagining the reach of technology, the power of government and even our ability to bend the force of nature.  

Within the NATURE project we have been exploring the possibilities of an alternative imaginary to the modern which we call a modest imaginary. A modest imaginary emerges out of the failings of modernity and brings attention to other ways of imagining infrastructure. Unlike the modern imaginary, a modest imaginary is rooted in the realities of infrastructure as we know it, inherently heterogeneous, uncertain and dynamic (Lawhon, Nakyagaba & Karpouzoglou in press). A modest imaginary is not traditional or anti-modern but an alternative imaginary outside the modern/anti-modern binary, shifting attention towards ideas of infrastructure that modernity may have suppressed. More concretely, we propose that thinking in more modest terms about infrastructure can empower imagining a range of infrastructures (and relations to them) rather than imposing a single model.  

In the first part of the seminar the theoretical contours of thinking through a modest lens will be briefly sketched out with the support of empirical illustrations from ongoing work in Stockholm, Kampala and Guwahati, including a public exhibition held in Stockholm during autumn 2021.  

In the second part of the seminar, the focus is on discussing the implications of the modest lens in a discussion format. Do you see any signs of an emerging modest imaginary? What types of possibilities does a modest imaginary entail? In what ways can a modest imaginary succeed or fail?  

Recommended Reading (open access online)  

Lawhon, M., Nsangi Nakyagaba, G., & Karpouzoglou, T. (2022). Towards a modest imaginary? Sanitation in Kampala beyond the modern infrastructure ideal. Urban Studies , 00420980211064519. 

Short bio:

I am interested in the socio-technical character of water systems, actor relationships with water systems, and the urban political ecologies of water infrastructure. I currently lead research and collaborations with various academic partners within Sweden, Kenya and India through ongoing research projects. In the project WaterFlow awarded to Formas Future Research Leaders, I lead research on conflict(s) and cooperation between formal and informal urban water regimes in Asia and Africa. I am also leading the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond NATURE project that explores nature-society relations through urban water infrastructure collaborating with diverse actors including art institutions, financed by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. I am further a co-investigator of the Formas SEQWENS project which is a strongly interdisciplinary endeavour involving KTH researchers, the Swedish public and private sector partners exploring sustainability and equity of water and energy systems during actor-driven disruptive innovation in Sweden. I am an active collaborator of the KTH WaterCentre at which I have also previously been involved with as Research Coordinator.