The „golden hands“ of repair in war: expertise, trajectories and identifications of invisible critical infrastructure workers in Russia's war against Ukraine.
Sophie Lambroschini1; 1 Centre Marc Bloch, Germany
Discussion
This presentation explores the adaptation and transformation of critical infrastructure networks (water and power) in the context of the war in Ukraine since 2014 from the perspective of the professional strategies of workers, technicians, and managers of utilities companies. These professionals face the breakdown of supply chains, damages by mines and missile strikes to their hardware, and disruption of integrated systems by frontlines and minefields as everyday events of extreme uncertainty, precipitating them into liminal situations where ordinary actions of repair take on critical importance and meaning. Situating the human interaction with technological systems in the historical and spatial context of Soviet and post-Soviet crisis management, the article analyses how Ukrainian infrastructural workers develop strategies, practices of adaptability, and innovation by reactivating historical experiences of crisis experienced in the shortage economy of the Soviet period and its immediate aftermath, as well as the transformation of norms and values of professional legitimacy. Fieldwork conducted at a water supply company in the conflict zone in Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas from 2017-2022 serves as a foundation for the analysis and is supplemented by ethnographic material collected throughout Ukraine since the full-scale invasion in February 2022.
