{"product_id":"lifelines-of-our-society-isbn-9780262546386","title":"Lifelines of Our Society","description":"\u003cb\u003eA comprehensive history and examination of global infrastructures and the outsized role they play in our lives.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eInfrastructure is essential to defining how the public functions, yet there is little public knowledge regarding why and how it became today’s strongest global force over government and individual lives. Who should build and maintain infrastructures? How are they to be protected? And why are they all in such bad shape? In \u003ci\u003eLifelines of Our Society, \u003c\/i\u003eDirk van Laak offers broad audiences a history of global infrastructures—focused on Western societies, over the past two hundred years—that considers all their many paradoxes. He illustrates three aspects of infrastructure: their development, their influence on nation building and colonialism, and finally, how individuals internalize infrastructure and increasingly become not only its user but regulator.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBeginning with public works, infrastructure in the nineteenth century carried the hope that it would facilitate world peace. Van Laak shows how, instead, it transformed to promote consumerism’s individual freedoms and our notions of work, leisure, and fulfillment. \u003ci\u003e Lifelines of Our Society\u003c\/i\u003e reveals how today’s infrastructure is both a source and a reflection of concentrated power and economic growth, which takes the form of cities under permanent construction. Symbols of power, van Laak describes, come with vulnerability, and this book illustrates the dual nature of infrastructure’s potential to hold nostalgia and inspire fear, to ease movement and govern ideas, and to bring independence to the nuclear family and control governments of the Global South.Foreword vii\u003cbr\u003ePaul N. Edwards\u003cbr\u003ePreface to the English-Language Edition xi\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments xv\u003cbr\u003eIntroduction: As Long As It Keeps Working...1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI The Classical Era of Infrastructure\u003cbr\u003e1 Public Works: The Nineteenth Century 21\u003cbr\u003e2 Lifelines of Community: The Early Twentieth Century 47\u003cbr\u003e3 The Measure of Modernity: The Late Twentieth Century 79\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eII Nodes of Infrastructural Debate\u003cbr\u003e4 Public, Private, or Partnership? How Infrastructure is Organized 113\u003cbr\u003e5 Prestige Projects: Symbolic Value and Failure 129\u003cbr\u003e6 Crumbling Bridges: The Life Cycles of Infrastructures 143\u003cbr\u003e7 Achilles' Heels: The Vulnerability of Large-Scale Networks 157\u003cbr\u003e8 The Cold Persona: Users and Operators of Infrastructures 173\u003cbr\u003eConclusion: Down the Drain? 189\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNotes 207\u003cbr\u003eBibliography 259\u003cbr\u003eIndex 311“\u003ci\u003eLifelines of Our Society \u003c\/i\u003eis an engagingly written and well-researched book. Its panoramic view of infrastructures in their various forms and contexts offers a successful introduction to an abstract yet ubiquitous subject and an ideal entry point for further research on infrastructures worldwide.”\u003cbr\u003e —\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eContemporary European History\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Dirk van Laak and\u003ci\u003e Lifelines of Our Society: A Global History of Infrastructure \u003c\/i\u003ecertainly make a case that infrastructure matters.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Public Works Management \u0026amp; Policy\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“Lifelines of Our Society \u003c\/i\u003ecould be useful in the repertoire of anyone interested in thinking seriously about infrastructure.”\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003e—H-Net Reviews\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“Dirk van Laak has written a canonical text on the idea of infrastructure, spanning history, philosophy, public policy, social science, technology, art, and even fiction writing. The eloquent translation by Erik Butler and introduction by Paul Edwards bring this 2018 German book up to date.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Christine L. Borgman, Distinguished Research Professor, UCLA; author of \u003ci\u003eBig Data, Little Data, No Data\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Van Laak takes us on a lively tour of modern society’s proliferating infrastructures, documenting the intricate interplay between material infrastructures and the lived practices that rely upon them.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e—Robin Williams, Director of the Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation, University of Edinburgh\u003c\/b\u003eDirk van Laak is\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eProfessor of History from the 19th to the 21st Century at Leipzig University.","brand":"The MIT Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304006766821,"sku":"NP9780262546386","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780262546386.jpg?v=1767731450","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/lifelines-of-our-society-isbn-9780262546386","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}