Title Letters, power lines, and other dangerous things : the politics of infrastructure security / Ryan Ellis

Published Cambridge, Massachusetts : The MIT Press, [2020]

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Description 1 online resource (ix, 372 pages) Series Infrastructures Infrastructures series. Contents Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Letters, Power Lines, and Other Dangerous Things -- The Political Origins of Infrastructure Vulnerability: Regulation and Deregulation Revisited -- Ubiquitous Targets: Infrastructure Security after September 11 -- Theoretical Foundations: Making Sense of Infrastructure -- Theoretical Foundations: Making Sense of Risk -- The Structure of the Book -- I: The Political Origins of Infrastructure Vulnerability -- 1. Stumbling toward Resilience: The Overlooked Virtues of Regulation Normal Accidents: Complex Networks, Tight Coupling, and Failure -- The Postal System: Regulation and Distributed Control -- Regulating the Railroads: Redundancy and the Unintended Benefits of Rate Policy -- A Network of Networks: Electric Power, Regulation, and Control -- Stumbling toward Resilience: Revisiting and Rethinking Infrastructure Regulation -- 2. The Political Origins of Infrastructure Vulnerability: The Hidden Vices of Deregulation -- Deregulating Postal Service: Modernization, Information and Communication Technologies, and Vulnerability -- Railroad Deregulation: Salvation and Risk The Deregulation of Electric Power: Tight Coupling and Complexity -- The Political Origins of Infrastructure Vulnerability -- II: Ubiquitous Targets: Infrastructure Security after September 11 -- 3. Imagination Unbound: Risk, Politics, and Post-9/11 Anxiety -- Ubiquitous Targets: Rethinking and Reframing Infrastructure -- The Cultural Construction of Infrastructure Vulnerability: A Partial History -- Institutionalizing Infrastructure Security: The Creation of the Department of Homeland Security -- The Politics of Risk: The Radical Possibilities of a Promiscuous Resource Infrastructure Inversion and the Politics of Post-9/11 Security -- 4. Infected Mail: Labor, Commerce, and the 2001 Anthrax Attacks -- Old Fears and New Challenges: The 2001 Anthrax Attacks and the Limits of Planning -- Searching for Security: Risk and Infrastructure Publics -- The Sunk Politics of Biohazard Security -- 5. Green Security: The Environmental Movement, the Transportation of Hazardous Materials, and the War on Terror -- From Safety to Security: Hazardous Materials Regulation in Historical Perspective -- Rethinking Rail Security after 9/11: Preparing for a "Big Bang." Risk Coalitions: Rerouting, Preemption, and the War on Terror -- The Politics of Green Security -- 6. Regulating Cybersecurity: The Unexpected Remaking of Electric Power -- Reforming Electric Power: The Electric Power Industry Makes Its Case-and Gets Nowhere -- The August 2003 Blackout: Revisiting Electric Power -- The Energy Policy Act of 2005: Reforms-Intended and Otherwise -- Public Accountability and Security -- Conclusion: The Politics of Critical Infrastructure Protection -- Recovering the Sunk Politics of Infrastructure: The Importance of Historical Thinking Summary "In the long-shadow of September 11, 2001, infrastructures have undergone a significant reorganization. Letters, Power Lines, and Other Dangerous Things examines how new fears and worries over security have transformed the material and social outlines of infrastructure. The book follows three infrastructures-the postal system, freight rail, and the electric power system-and documents the subtle and explicit changes that have remade these systems. The book places the rise of "critical infrastructure protection"--A buzzword, a governing logic, and a multi-billion dollar funding priority-within a larger historical framework. Drawing from thousands of pages of regulatory filings, court documents, and other governmental documents, the book pieces together a larger story about risk and infrastructure. It identifies the political origins of infrastructure vulnerability-demonstrating how decades of political and economic restructuring ("deregulation") created system that were both politically unaccountable and vulnerable to systemic failure; and it examines how a cross-section of actors-including workers, civic groups, city councils, bureaucrats, and others-attempted to leverage new fears about infrastructure danger into reinvigorated systems of public accountability. Put another way, it examines the social and technical processes that made infrastructure dangerous; and then follows the ways in which these "dangerous things" were made safe and secure. The book offers a reminder that infrastructures always order they organize different publics, uses, ideas about what and who a system is for, into a tentative hierarchy. And security presents an opportunity to revisit and in some case remake these orders. The book provides a window into how infrastructures are made and remade sometimes in surprising and contradictory ways"-- Provided by publisher Analysis SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY/General SOCIAL SCIENCES/Political Science/General Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject Infrastructure (Economics) -- Security measures -- United States BUSINESS & ECONOMICS -- Infrastructure. Infrastructure (Economics) -- Security measures United States Form Electronic book LC no. 2019025809 ISBN 9780262357777 0262357771

Other Titles Politics of infrastructure security

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