Security Patchworking in Lebanon: Infrastructuring Across Failing Infrastructures

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Abstract

In this paper we bring to light the infrastructuring work carried out by people in Lebanon to establish and maintain everyday security in response to multiple simultaneously failing infrastructures. We do so through interviews with 13 participants from 12 digital and human rights organisations and two weeks of ethnographically informed fieldwork in Beirut, Lebanon, in July 2022. Through our analysis we develop the notion of security patchworking that makes visible the infrastructuring work necessitated to secure basic needs such as electricity provision, identity authentication and financial resources. Such practices are rooted in differing mechanisms of protection that often result in new forms of insecurity. We discuss the
implications for CSCW and HCI researchers and point to security patchworking as a lens to be used when designing technologies to support infrastructuring, while advocating for collaborative work across CSCW and security research.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
PublisherACM
Pages1-26
Number of pages26
Volume8
EditionCSCW1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Apr 2024

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