Infrastructuring [Im]perfect markets: Putting a ‘very rural’ 5G digital infrastructure in place

Mason, Katy; Wagg, Sharon; Araujo, Luis

Abstract

This paper breaks new ground by revealing and conceptualising the infrastructuring of moral markets as a process that aggregates and integrates experimental sociomaterial practices through the construction and use of local and global knowledge architectures. We follow the moral market infrastructuring work of a project conceptualised as a market intervention to make high quality digital connectivity services accessible to excluded communities in very rural places: making imperfect markets, (more) perfect. In contrast with market studies that focus on the structuring of moral markets, this study explicates the sociomaterial practices that sit beneath such markets, sediment-ing moralities into the infrastructures of markets. In so doing, we characterise the infrastructuring work of moral market-makers, and the construction of different forms of knowledge architectures as a key element of that work. Finally, we reveal how these knowledge architectures capture, reused reform and sediment experimental sociomaterial practices, through the aggregation and integration of moral market action.

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (published)
• Conference Name: European Group for Organizational Studies
• Start Date: Jul 7, 2022
• End Date: Jul 9, 2022
• Deposit Date: Mar 3, 2025
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed