What do cars do when they are parked? Material objects and infrastructuring in social practices

Abstract

The paper problematises current conceptualisations of objects in social practices by investigating car parking, using original research material. Motionless cars are not only ‘leftovers’ of driving–they actively perform parking while waiting for their users to start driving again. They infrastructure everyday im|mobility and play a part in shaping urban environments. Two modalities of social practice are discerned and described to account for these performative capacities of objects. By describing different ways in which cars are taken care of and take part in parking in the material setting of a street, the article argues for more attention to non-human objects involved in social practices, particularly in the context of their infrastructuring capacities. The article contributes to the current developments in theories of social practices, discourses on social materiality and infrastructuring and complements existing understandings of automobility.