Contingency in Infrastructures: Vulnerability, Ductility, Resilience

What is the relationship between contingency and vulnerability in the evolution of infrastructures? How do they enact flexibility and stability of Boundary Objects (BOs) and how do the latter shape infrastructures? Departing from these research questions, this chapter aims to investigate the relationship between contingency and vulnerability in the evolution of infrastructures through three stories in which very different types of infrastructures, technologies, and social settings are at work. The different relationships between infrastructures and BOs emerging from these stories are used to argue the role of contingency and vulnerability in shaping action and ontology, occurrence/situatedness and resilience/resistance of infrastructures