︎



How can infrastructure be criminal? How does a mine, an electricity grid, a prison or a factory, become a perpetrator of violence, insecurity and threat? Material Crimes tries to answer these questions. Each episode investigates a different, discrete piece of infrastructure, tracing its global - often colonial - connections across time and space. They show us how the physical sites of everyday life are intimately linked to networks of private and public actors that inflict violence on spaces and communities often living on the margins. The series also shines a spotlight on the movements people have built to reveal and challenge the infrastructural crimes that harm them.

Season 1 is currently broadcasting and Season 2 is under production. 

︎︎︎ About the Project
︎︎︎ A Guide to Making an Episode



Sort by
︎︎︎ Episode
︎︎︎ Infrastructure
︎︎︎ Location/Map
︎︎︎ Author



“You are Listening to Material Crimes”
- Introduction to the Series

In this episode, Surviving Society hosts Chantelle Lewis and Tissot Regis talk with Maia Holtermann Entwistle and Sharri Plonski about what it was like to create and produce the Material Crimes series. They discuss how each episode feeds into an intellectual arc that tries to understand the relationship between colonialism, capitalism, and the material infrastructures that shape everyday life. Straddling the “infrastructural crimes” highlighted by each episode, they discuss how states and corporations profit from infrastructure, but also how infrastructure creates opportunities for powerful people-led movements that challenge infrastructural violence and impunity. You’ll also hear them talk about the joys and difficulties of intellectual collaboration, and how it can help us survive the academy!