Infrastructural citizenship in post-networked contexts: hybridity in South Africa

This chapter questions how the concept and practice of infrastructural citizenship is challenged and re-shaped in an increasingly post-networked world. Despite modernist policy assumptions that infrastructural citizenship is synonymous with universal access to centralised networked infrastructure, there is growing recognition that complete ‘grid’ reliance is unrealistic and unrepresentative. This chapter explores the implications of post-networked infrastructure transitions for perceptions and practices of infrastructural citizenship. South Africa provides a pertinent example because post-apartheid governments have prioritised infrastructure-centric citizenship, with state-subsidised basic services a material representation of political rights. This illustrative case study demonstrates the hybridity of post-networked infrastructure governance, where the emergence of new state and non-state actors has significant implications for citizenship. Specifically, by promoting post-networked infrastructure sources and technologies, the state is potentially undermining the distribution capacity and quality of networked infrastructure while also legitimising a politics of uneven and differentiated citizenship that is materialised and institutionalised through infrastructure.