Inventing ‘infrastructure’: tracing the etymological blueprint of an omnipresent sociotechnical metaphor

This article proposes an archaeology of the concept of ‘infrastructure’, focusing specifically on a period ranging from 1842 until 1951, before the term entered the English language from French. In doing so, it contributes to an ongoing discussion on ‘What does infrastructure really mean?’ by deconstructing the omnipresent concept of ‘infrastructure’ as an expression of modernity that has crystallised a sociotechnical imaginary: a relation between technology, space and power. Indeed, our understanding of its etymological, epistemological and intellectual origins is patchy, based on repeated chronological mistakes and conceptual misunderstandings. To put it bluntly: we do not know how the word came to be. By unearthing the origins of ‘infrastructure’, this article aims to contribute to scholarly debates on the definition(s) of infrastructure in social sciences, urban studies, science and technology studies and infrastructure studies. It also wishes to contribute to ongoing debates taking place in the public sphere regarding what should count as ‘infrastructure’. This paper’s findings demonstrate a clear relation to Karl Marx’s ‘historical materialism’; the paper also analyses how the word evolved over a short period of time to become sociotechnical metaphor; finally, the paper demonstrates the emergence of a concept that linked engineering to larger socioeconomic concerns in the 1890s, well before the emergence of ‘infrastructure’ as a key concept of development economics in the 1950s.