Social infrastructure, social friction, and counterpublics: a case study of 1970s Belfast

Social infrastructure has often been discussed as a means to reduce social tension, build community and facilitate the forming of social capital. However, social infrastructure can also foster positive social change in a quite different way. Through supporting grassroots self-organized counterpublics, it can produce positive social change via creating broader social friction. This alternative vision of social change fits within a more radical model of urban life in which groups sit inherently in tension with one another, rather than a model stemming from a liberal tradition focused on consensus or mutual understanding. In Belfast in Northern Ireland during the early 1970s, inner-city working-class communities resisted unwanted urban redevelopment during a time of broader social unrest. Social infrastructure became a base for communities to self-organize, as well as a target for destruction by government actors due to its ability to sustain sometimes-violent civic action. This article draws on this historical case to re-embed social infrastructure within a pluralist model of society. This case shows the potential of social infrastructure to support positive social change not just by creating social harmony within a liberal paradigm of consensus, but by enabling grassroots community counterpublics to create social friction.