In the midst of a material turn that has been embraced by a number of disciplines and fields, and as we are witnessing an infrastructural moment in academic and operational circles alike, this article seeks to re-conceptualize the relationship between infrastructures and discourses. To carry out this agenda, we bring forward the notion of discursive vehicles, as a tool to explore how discourses can make, remake, and unmake infrastructures. Using two case studies from Delhi (India) and Québec (Canada), we outline how discourses can determine whether a given material artefact counts as infrastructure , as well as transform how it is defined and used. As a concept, discursive vehicles allow us to observe how multiple discourses are produced over infrastructures, and analyse how they clash, converge, or rearrange themselves. Overall, our aim is to strengthen how knowledge hegemonies transform infrastructures and the built environment more generally, via a meta-analysis of infrastructures.
Narayanan et al. (Sun,) studied this question.