Bücher der Reihe Politics of Repair

Most social science studies on automobility have focused on the production, usage, identity construction and aesthetic improvements of personal means of transportation. What happens if we shift the focus to the labour, knowledge and social relations that go into the unavoidable moments of maintenance and repair? Taking motorcycling in Romania as an ethnographic entry point, this book documents how bikers handle the inevitable moments of malfunction and breakdown. Using both mobile and sedentary research methods, the book describes the joys and troubles experienced by amateur mechanics, professional mechanics and untechnical men and women when fixing bikes.

The technological capacity to transform biology - repairing, reshaping and replacing body parts, chemicals and functions - is now a part of our lives. This collection focuses on why people find these practices so seductive...

We are all repairers. Exploring some of the ways in which repair practices and perceptions of brokenness vary culturally Repair, Brokenness, Breakthrough argues that repair is an attempt to extend the life of things as well as an answer to failures, gaps, wrongdoings and leftovers.