• “No Such Thing as ‘Can’t’ in the Romanian Railroads”: On Technological Ruination and Creative Maintenance in the Age of Innovation - Adrian Deoancă

  • Mar 21 2023
  • Duración: 19 m
  • Podcast

“No Such Thing as ‘Can’t’ in the Romanian Railroads”: On Technological Ruination and Creative Maintenance in the Age of Innovation - Adrian Deoancă Por arte de portada

“No Such Thing as ‘Can’t’ in the Romanian Railroads”: On Technological Ruination and Creative Maintenance in the Age of Innovation - Adrian Deoancă

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  • At the end of a frustrating work duty, I asked Iosif, the foreman of a Romanian rail repair crew, what would have happened had his team not managed to mend the broken suspension of a cargo wagon. A routine task, replacing the part had turned into a taxing six-hour long toil: the workers had to use scavenged parts, makeshift tools and improvised fixes that one does not learn from any technical handbook. “There’s no such thing as ‘can’t’ in the Romanian Railroads!” he replied. His answer, equally fatalistic and boastful, eloquently captured the plight of state-run rails in Romania, and, more broadly, the ruin of public infrastructures in late capitalism writ large, as well as their resilience. Chronic underinvestment means that aging technologies break more frequently and pose greater risks to cargo, human life, and the environment. Under such circumstances, maintenance and repair work is both more important than ever and more difficult to undertake successfully, as understaffed repair crews fight decay with subpar parts and equipment. While their work conditions may be described at best as precarious, Romanian railroaders like Ioji take pride in the social value of their work, their responsibility to the general public, and their improvisational skills. To understand the politics of ruination and repair in late capitalism social scientists must pay close attention to the processes that underpin technological degradation and precarious work as well as to the practical and ethical struggles of the workers who are forced to make do with whatever resources might be available. This is a story of creative maintenance in an age of relentless destruction.Read by actor Daniel Popa , with an illustration by Kadna Andahttps://theanthro.art/no-such-thing-as-cant-in-the-romanian-railroads-on-technological-ruination-and-creative-maintenance-in-the-age-of-innovation/
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