On, off, below and beyond the urban electrical grid the energy bricoleurs of Gulu Town

Abstract

This paper builds on heterogeneous infrastructures scholarship to examine urban electricity access geographies in the Global South. I propose the notion of urban bricoleurs to help understand how the urban poor negotiate changing electrical infrastructure opportunities. Using a Ugandan case study, I present socio-electric stories of residents to show how electricity supply is derived from an eclectic range of sources, and how accessing these sources is negotiated through socio-economic dynamics. These stories suggest that key to understanding heterogeneous infrastructures is recognizing the role that urban inhabitants have in negotiating infrastructure through different movements and connectivities. That the urban poor are best understood as bricoleurs, making creative use of whatever materials are at hand to realize their livelihood needs. This allows a conceptual shift from defining African urban electrical geographies as a failure of achieving grid access, to focusing on how urban residents craft out imperfect, yet functioning, socio-electric lives.

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