Living with a Dam: A Case of Care Practices in Large Technical Systems

The paper discusses the issue of safe functioning of large technical systems (LTS) and questions what are the principles of “operating and living together” of heterogeneous communities. It argues that personal interactions between humans, nature, and technology are crucial for the sustainable operation of socio-technical systems. The paper presents some results of an “ethnographic case study” carried out in one of the biggest hydro-energy systems in Bulgaria, that of “Kardzhali dam”. In order to make clear how an ‘intersubjective’ (or inter-actantial) space between humans and non-humans is being formed and how it could bring a sustainable functioning of the dam, the paper explores the micro layer of actors’ interactions, i.e. the co-existence in everyday life. Particularly, it is focused on the experience of the dam’s chief Ivan Delchev who has spent over 40 years (most of his life and the whole life of the dam) in diligent work, living with technology. Such a long lasting habitation in common space and time brings to the formation of a specific “heterogeneous coupling” (Tchalakov 2004), where caring for the Other (non-human) could not be explained just as “trials of strength” (Latour 1988). Searching for pathways of possible dialogue between Actor-Network Theory and phenomenology (Schutz, Levinas), the analysis reveals in what way “growing together” with technology and “feeling its own rhythm and its own breathing”, in the words of the dam’s chief, have a crucial contribution to the safe operation of the whole hydroelectric system. Living with a Dam: A Case of Care Practices in Large Technical Systems