Although repair work has been a topic of study within participatory research, less attention has been paid to tacit structural features such as temporal orders (Felt, 2014). Combining case studies is important as it addresses the way in which time is ordered by maintenance
165 practices. Maintenance of infrastructures has been considered by Graham and Thrift, who highlight the need to understand physical maintenance in looking ahead, as he notes the need for repair to secure the possibility of the city, ‘the remorseless work of repair and maintenance’ (2008: 21). Thrift views maintenance and those who ‘maintain’ as ‘foot-soldiers of innovation’, as without it innovation will fail. This thesis seeks to move away from the idea that innovation is a key agent in creating, amending and making the future, neglecting the present decay of a system in order to anticipate a better future. Similar to Thrift, Russell and Vinsel interpret maintenance as the labour needed to stop a system from decaying (2016).
Between 1974 and 2015, mechanisms believed to be ‘innovative’, such as the shift to alternative energy sources saw further strikes and shortages. Most notably, the 1984/5 Miners’ Strike, when the National Union of Miners staged a year of industrial action due to the closure of several coal mines in Britain. In 2015 coal consumption was one tenth the amount it had been in 1974.128 There were no coal miners in the United Kingdom in 2015 and those who employed in electricity generation are forbidden to go on strike by law. The electricity network today is fragmented, each part having different organisations responsible for overseeing the infrastructure. The development of a complex relationship between state and publics meant that often it is only when a disruptive event occurs that people realise their system-dependence and role within the system.
Hall and Smith have noted that without constant maintenance, power structures would soon be compromised if work was discontinued ‘how quickly even our most massive and concrete modern accomplishments would be compromised’ (2014: 9). Thrift’s approach to maintenance, that it is about the quotidian and small activities that allow an upkeep of structures, rather than the ‘big picture’ of policy and governance, is a lens by which to view the future as it highlights how publics prevent problems from occurring. After a breakdown, repair is central to the immediate future, however the breakdown first appears not because the need to repair has been ignored, rather that the problems were not visible or considered in the first instance. This is the complexity in action (2.2). To illustrate this dynamic we can turn to our case studies, when the connectedness of the system and the ‘systemness’ of
128 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/energy-consumption-in-the-uk
166 everyday practices (2.3) (Urry, 2016:73) only became visible when infrastructures were compromised (5.2). For the user, energy is expected to be present in the home on a day-to-day basis; the user does not see the ways in which it might need to be repaired until disruption occurs to them. Human action is central to the system, yet people are unaware their actions play into it. Systems operate ‘behind the scenes’, with the lay public unaware of how they demonstrate and how they ‘bear’ systems as they go about their lives (Urry, 2016: 87).
Maintenance is not only an act within infrastructures, such as the grid itself, but additionally social infrastructures and publics (after Hall and Smith, 2014). In 1974 the power relations between government, worker and the lay public needed to be repaired. This was due to the lack of upkeep that had been required to keep the system working, in a changing time of increased energy demand and consumption, compared to when the electricity network had been brought into public ownership in 1947 (4.1).
Maintaining publics within the system is highlighted by Bowker and Star, who emphasise the importance and necessity of ‘standards’, not only the technical but that the practices of individuals get ‘hustled’’ into standard form as well (2000:139) The standards that are adopted, both technical and social, are not always necessarily the best. These standards are often set by organisational bodies. In 1974 the government dictated the ways in which the public used electricity, promoting increased use of energy in the domestic sphere (see Chapter Four). In 2015, Electricity Northwest were responsible for connecting electricity to the home, but private energy companies set the price of energy and did not inform the user how much to use, and how. Yet energy saving rhetoric has become part of everyday life. The maintenance of these standards presents ethical and philosophical decisions, as those made early on in the standardisation process can have a huge impact on how the user integrates with the infrastructure. The electricity network in the UK was developed and geared towards a constant and steady supply. To change habits of usage requires a new ‘hustle’, one that will take years to embed into infrastructures. Combining these aspects of the system, the maintenance space can be viewed as the period between events. Power cuts can be viewed as points of visible unkempt maintenance, a point of ‘slow disaster’ (Knowles, 2016), allowing the invisibility of the neglect to become visible.
167 The case studies highlight the maintenance of power and the long processes of deferred maintenance on technological systems that cause power shifts. Lack of maintenance is casually implicated in 1974 by the need to ration electricity to the nation, in 2015 the blackout being caused by the flooding of the substation. The systems appeared to be fine prior to the oil crisis and the impact of climate change, by viewing the contextual large-scale dynamics suddenly the systems seem badly maintained and badly adapted, adding to the complexity.
Through upkeep of a ‘top-down’ structure, where decision makers are high up in the structure, processes further along the chains within the networks are neglected. One way to view this is through Hughes’ notion of the ‘reverse salient’ (1983), points which slow the development of a system and have the potential to create further issues in the future, as without fixing the issue the system’s development comes to a halt. In this instance, electrical blackouts can be viewed as either the reverse salient or the symptom of several reverse salients. In either case the solution to these problems does not have to come from the same register, a political solution may help a technical problem, and vice versa. This again demonstrates the characteristics of complexity in action and how in order to understand infrastructures and the publics involved with them, the relationship between background and foreground needs to be problematized, the lights need to be turned on to different parts of the system. A broadening of responsibility occurs and the governance of the system addressed.