Auto Mechanics

Technology and Expertise in Twentieth-Century America

Häftad, Engelska, 2010

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The history of automobiles is not just the story of invention, manufacturing, and marketing; it is also a story of repair. Auto Mechanics opens the repair shop to historical study-for the first time-by tracing the emergence of a dirty, difficult, and important profession. Kevin L. Borg's study spans a century of automotive technology-from the horseless carriage of the late nineteenth century to the "check engine" light of the late twentieth. Drawing from a diverse body of source material, Borg explores how the mechanic's occupation formed and evolved within the context of broad American fault lines of class, race, and gender and how vocational education entwined these tensions around the mechanic's unique expertise. He further shows how aspects of the consumer rights and environmental movements, as well as the design of automotive electronics, reflected and challenged the social identity and expertise of the mechanic. In the history of the American auto mechanic, Borg finds the origins of a persistent anxiety that even today accompanies the prospect of taking one's car in for repair.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2010-07-26
Mått152 x 229 x 17 mm
Vikt386 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
SerieStudies in Industry and Society
Antal sidor280
FörlagJohns Hopkins University Press
ISBN9780801894855

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AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Technology's Middle Ground1. The Problem with Chauffeur-Mechanics2. Ad Hoc Mechanics3. Creating New Mechanics4. The Automobile in Public Education5. Tinkering with Sociotechnical Hierarchies6. Suburban Paradox: Maintaining Automobility in the Postwar Decades7. "Check Engine": Technology of DistrustConclusion: Servants or Savants? Revaluing the Middle GroundNotesEssay on SourcesIndex

Auto Mechanics provides a superbly researched, engaging look into the profession that's near and dear to us all. -- John Lypen Motor Magazine 2007 Borg's own work in the repair shop infuses the study with insights that I am sure would escape anyone without the experience he has had... His questions are anything but academic. -- Steve Thompson AutoWeek 2007 He's... provided a source of inspiration to those who would like to work to improve the industry's image, recruitment and retention. -- Steve Relyea Import Automotive Parts & Accessories 2008 This is an excellent work that has much to contribute to our understanding of the automobile, technology, and wider trends in American history. -- Amy Gangloff Michigan Historical Review 2008 In seven richly detailed chapters, theoretically sophisticated and attentive to nuances of race, class, and gender, Borg analyzes the changing background, training, and expertise of auto mechanics over the course of the twentieth century. -- Joseph J. Corn Technology and Culture 2008 A wonderfully insightful study of the emergence and evolution of a contingent occupation and the meaning that that position had on both the people who did the work and those who procured the workers' services. -- Lisa M. Fine Labor History 2008 Auto Mechanics is an important contribution to U.S. labor and economic history and to our understanding of the ways that the mass production of automobiles changed working life. -- Andrew E. Kersten Journal of American History 2008 Well-written and well-researched... will be read with interest by all scholars of modern America. -- David Blanke Register of the Kentucky Historical Society 2007 Auto Mechanics sheds new light on the history of the automobile that top-down and bottom-up studies alike have missed. Call it a 'history from the middle-out,' if you will. -- Walter L. Elden IEEE Technology and Society Magazine 2008 Kevin Borg's Auto Mechanics is a finely researched, rich social history. -- Thomas A. Castillo Enterprise and Society 2008 Borg's Auto Mechanics will strongly appeal not only to those with an interest in this particular group, but also more generally to scholars working on the connections among material culture, labor, and the history of technology. -- Robert Buerglener American Quarterly 2008 Borg's history of technology, expert knowledge, training, recruitment, and reproduction of social inequality is elegantly crafted and seamlessly narrated... Given the centrality of the rise of the automobile to 20th-century American history, his book could be taught to undergraduate or graduate students in courses on sociology and the history of technology, as well as courses focused on industrialization, labor, or gender. -- Karla A. Erickson Work and Occupations 2008 Borg's careful attention to issues of race and gender, and his ability to draw connections between larger social movements and technological change makes Auto Mechanics a valuable contribution to a new generation of scholarship on the automobile, one that marries social history and the history of technology. -- Kathleen Franz Journal of Social History 2010