Behind the black boxes of algorithms promoting or adding friction to posts, technical design decisions made to affect behavior, and institutions stood up to make decisions about content online, it can be easy to lose track of the heteromation involved, the humans spreading disinformation and, on the other side, moderating or choosing not to moderate it. This can be aptly shown in the case of the spread of misinformation on WhatsApp during Brazil’s 2018 general elections. Since WhatsApp runs on a peer-to-peer architecture, there was no algorithm curating content according to the characteristics or demographics of the users, which is how filter bubbles work on Facebook. Instead, a human infrastructure was assembled to create a pro-Bolsonaro environment on WhatsApp and spread misinformation to bolster his candidacy. In this paper, we articulate the labor executed by the human infrastructure of misinformation as hetoromation.

The concluding chapter summarises the key findings of the book by juxtaposing the workings of Accra’s old, established station with the designated function of a government-mandated and top-down administered public road transport terminal – the ‘new station’, as Accra’s urbanites have pithily dubbed it. It scales up the comparison to consider the significance of urban infrastructure as a ‘hard’ technical system and as a ‘soft’ system of sociality in relation to questions of governance, social order, and the significance of usage. Finally, it reflects on the broader implications of this study by pointing out empirical and theoretical continuities with the practices, places, and politics of urban hustle that go beyond this particular case of a West African bus station.

The introduction describes some of the key features and the wide range of actors and activities that characterise the workings of a long-distance bus station in Accra, Ghana’s capital. It then presents two meanings of hustle that capture the station’s workings: as a noun, describing crowded, hectic, and potentially confusing situations; and as a verb, denoting precarious yet venturesome economic activities. Building on the ambivalences evoked by the different uses and perspectives of the term, it situates the significance of this study in relation to scholarly discussions of transport work, the ‘informal economy’, (auto)mobility, infrastructure, and urban social life. It then outlines the diversity of functions and types of Ghanaian bus stations, and concludes with a reflection on methodology, highlighting the value of a single-sited ethnographic approach to urban complexity and trans-local mobility, and an itinerary of the book’s chapters.

From 2018 to 2022, the ResisTIC (Criticism and circumvention of digital borders in Russia) project team has endeavored to analyze how different actors of the Russian Internet (RuNet) resist and adapt to the recent wave of authoritarian and centralizing regulations by the Russian state, with a particular focus on online resistance that reveals so far lesser-known social practices and techniques for circumventing online constraints. The chapter undertakes an infrastructure-based sociology of the RuNet, focusing on the technical devices and assets involved in surveillance and censorship, and on the strategies of resistance and circumvention “by infrastructure” that follow. The empirical core of the chapter will provide an overview of a number of studies undertaken by the ResisTIC project team in the past few years. While the presentation of the case studies will by necessity be relatively brief, presenting them together will allow to draw some general conclusions about the state of infrastructure-based digital sovereignization in Russia.

This chapter empirically analyzes how portfolios of external finance impact aid agreements. The chapter integrates data on external debt and foreign aid to establish a comprehensive picture of developing countries' portfolios of external finance, demonstrating that these have become less reliant on traditional donors over time. The analysis tests if a greater share of finance from Chinese or private sources is associated with favorable terms from traditional donors, using measures of aid volume, infrastructure project share, and conditions attached to World Bank projects. The findings indicate that as countries draw a greater share of their external finance from nontraditional sources, they are more likely to receive aid on preferred terms. The relationship is stronger for countries of strategic significance to donors and, especially, those with higher donor trust.

Chapter 2 examines the various ways in which British conquest affected the harbour’s relationship with two neighbouring princely states over the course of the nineteenth century. While the English East India Company attempted to erect various fiscal barriers between the British port and the two neighbouring states over the course of the nineteenth century, these restrictions ultimately proved to be counterproductive severing the port from its hinterland, which lay almost entirely in the two states. As the global market for agrarian produce expanded in the latter half of the nineteenth century therefore, the colonial state was forced to ease many of these restrictions to facilitate the passage of commodities, especially since countermeasures enacted by the two states had begun to adversely affect the port’s fortunes. Through a close analysis of the interportal agreement of 1865, the most significant step towards the region’s economic integration, this chapter will assess the motivations behind the agreement and its wide-ranging impact. Utilizing sources from the archives of the Cochin State, this chapter will track the political and commercial motivations guiding the state as it attempted to get more involved in the British port’s affairs and assess the impact of its growing involvement on Cochin’s development.

This chapter presents Republican-era efforts to turn the Yangtze River into an engine of developmental nation-building by erecting a Three Gorges Dam. Starting with Sun Yat-sen’s initial proposal in 1919 and closing with the Sino-American attempt in the 1940s, this chapter examines how Chinese and foreign actors pursued this developmental dream.Undeterred by the financial challenges of the project, the dam’s backers argued China could overcome a domestic dearth of capital by working with foreign collaborators. This joint venture would benefit both China and foreigners by not only easing trade with the Chinese interior and creating a marvel of modern engineering, but also because the dam would furnish a gargantuan electrical stimulus to the transformation of China into an industrial powerhouse with a growing demand for foreign products. Although the dam was not constructed in the Republican period, Chinese and foreign actors would continue to pursue the infrastructural fantasy of installing mammoth dams on China’s rivers to fuel national industrialization on both sides of the Taiwan Straits during the Cold War.

Chapter 9 on siting and installation considers some of the key steps leading to the successful installation of a wind energy project, whether a single machine or large array. A section on resource assessment considers site wind measurements, the IEC Wind Classification system, and the measure-correlate-predict (MCP) procedure for establishing long-term characteristics at a prospective site. Array interactions are described in terms of energy loss and increased turbulence: empirical models are given for predicting both effects and wake influence is illustrated with field measurements from large and small arrays. The civil engineering aspects of project construction are examined, with description of different foundation types; simple rules are given for conventional gravity base design, with illustrations. The construction and environmental advantages of rock anchor foundations are described, and some examples given. Transport, access, and crane operations are discussed. The use of winch erection is illustrated with the example of a 50kW machine. The chapter concludes with a short summary of the necessary electrical infrastructure between a wind turbine and the external grid network.

In this chapter, I show how the current shift to digitalising tax administration in Kenya is connected to its colonial fiscal structures both in its design and implementation. Firstly, the idea that technology can help economic development in countries like Kenya has existed since colonial times and still features in current policies that endorse technology for economic development. Secondly, colonial structures are also present in the implementation strategies of a digital platform like the e-filing system central in this case study as they rely on colonial infrastructures for implementation. ITax, the e-filing system that is the focus of this chapter, was implemented quite rapidly and made mandatory within a short period. This chapter argues that the ‘promise’ of digitalisation as a driver of sustainability, modernisation, and economic growth is outweighed by the harm done by colonial history impacting its practice. I argue that colonial fiscal policies are still shaping Kenya’s tax practices. A closer look at Kenya’s colonial fiscal history is important for understanding how the current tax systems are shaped and informed by past practices.

In June 2020, the German Federal Government adopted its National Hydrogen Strategy (NWS), which was updated in July 2023, viewing green hydrogen as a key to the energy transition. To achieve net greenhouse gas neutrality by 2045, as required by law, the NWS envisages a rapid market ramp-up for hydrogen. This policy is supported by the recent amendment of the Energy Industry Act (EnWG), which introduces provisions for a prompt creation of a so-called hydrogen core network. However, for now, the required infrastructure does not exist. Against that background, this chapter will examine the existing permission regime in Germany for pure hydrogen infrastructure, specifically its transportation via pipelines and its large-scale storage in salt caverns as the best short-term storage option. The analytical focus will be trained on existing legal barriers that stand in the way of accelerating the construction and repurposing of infrastructure to disseminate hydrogen. To secure the planning and approval framework for the rapid expansion of hydrogen infrastructures in Germany, necessary adjustments to the current legal framework are proposed.