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Paper short abstract

What does everyday life look like when infrastructure constantly breaks? This paper analyzes the housing infrastructure (power, water, sewage, etc.) in Aktau, Kazakhstan. By closely examining maintenance practices of different actors, it shows how breakages constitute and shape everyday life.

Paper long abstract

This paper offers a perspective on housing infrastructure as a matter that becomes visible and ever-present through everyday breakages. In Aktau, Kazakhstan, almost the entire water supply, including fresh water, heating, and electricity, has been centrally provided through one power and desalination plant. The city has been tightly dependent on infrastructure built in the 1970s, which has not yet been centrally modernized or repaired to eliminate the constant state of breakages. The current infrastructural breakdown also reflects uncertainties about the retreat of the Caspian Sea. Those involved in maintenance are constantly negotiating what should be repaired, how, when, and at what expense.

This paper is based on in-depth interviews with the residents of the Soviet-built micro-districts of Aktau, maintenance workers, experts, and authorities; ethnographic observations of maintenance work; the analysis of laws and public discourse; and archival research of the documents related to maintenance during the Soviet time.

Further exploring the concept of a continuous state of breakdown, functionality spectrum, or brokenness (Martínez and Laviolette 2019), this paper details the conditions under which actors engage in maintenance. Looking at maintenance practices holistically, I situate them within the duality of two practices: ignoring the breakage and making-things-work. This paper pays specific attention to the labor conditions, materials, and bureaucratic situatedness of maintenance. Additionally, following Christina Schwenkel (2020), it places infrastructure on the spectrum of functionality as an intrinsic part of its everyday existence.