@article{1386685,
      recid = {1386685},
      author = {Ellis, Ryan,},
      title = {Letters, power lines, and other dangerous things : the  politics of infrastructure security /},
      pages = {1 online resource.},
      abstract = {"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"--},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1386685},
}