Infrastructural power: discretion and the dynamics of infrastructure in action

This article analyses how a pair of nineteenth century commodity exchanges—in Chicago and New Orleans—shaped the sociotechnical infrastructures underlying two key types market information—price quotations crop statistics. Specifically, paper investigates why these exchanges saw divergent outcomes, each successfully developing one information infrastructure but not other. Prior scholarship has understood infrastructural development as result idiosyncratic, social structural alignments in actors’ resources desires. paper, by contrast, examines such elements interacted with practical available to based on their roles within infrastructures. Findings demonstrate that gained influence proportion discretion over an infrastructure's everyday operations routines enabled. ‘infrastructural power', or lack thereof, distinct forms— ‘feedback’ Orleans ‘sacrifice’ Chicago—providing denying exchange ability shape its advantage. These findings suggest analysts should pay closer attention dynamics they relate ‘infrastructure action’.