Toward a New Multidiscipline: Infrastructural Studies
Lawrence Busch 
Distinguished Professor Department of Sociology
Michigan State University
East Lansing, Michigan, USA

The division of knowledge that we have inherited is now in the process of imploding. The distinctions between (1) the natural and social sciences and (2) among the various social sciences is something that we inherited from the early 19th century. Yet, recent ‘socionatural’ changes have challenged that disciplinary architecture, itself enshrined in university departments and academic journals. Phenomena as diverse as climate change, information technologies and obesity have challenged the boundaries (if not the core) of these disciplines. I propose the creation of a new multidiscipline that reflects not the boundaries of the disciplines we have inherited, but the ways in which they all depend on the creation and maintenance of infrastructure. That infrastructure consists simultaneously of material objects – roads, bridges, buildings, server farms – and social arrangements ‘guaranteed’ by norms, standards and laws. All ‘disciplinary’ concerns are necessarily embedded in this infrastructure, are made possible by it and must be maintained and modified to take into account changes in the ‘socionatural’ world.