Infrastructure Studies

The infrastructure studies method, developed by Susan Leigh Star, Geoffrey Bowker, and Karen Ruhleder, studies the normally invisible relational systems—standards, classifications, pipes, protocols, and installed bases—on which modern life silently depends. Its signature move is 'infrastructural inversion': deliberately foregrounding the background, treating the taken-for-granted substrate as the object of analysis, and reading its standards, classifications, and breakdowns to understand how it shapes work, knowledge, and lives.