Auto Mechanics

Technology and Expertise in Twentieth-Century America

Kevin L. Borg (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

280 Seiten

2010
Johns Hopkins University Press (Verlag)
978-0-8018-9485-5 (ISBN)

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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.

Kevin L. Borg is an associate professor of history at James Madison University.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Technology's Middle Ground
1. The Problem with Chauffeur-Mechanics
2. Ad Hoc Mechanics
3. Creating New Mechanics
4. The Automobile in Public Education
5. Tinkering with Sociotechnical Hierarchies
6. Suburban Paradox: Maintaining Automobility in the Postwar Decades
7. "Check Engine": Technology of Distrust
Conclusion: Servants or Savants? Revaluing the Middle Ground
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	26.7.2010
Reihe/Serie	Studies in Industry and Society
Zusatzinfo	32 Halftones, black and white
Verlagsort	Baltimore, MD
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	386 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Technikgeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Wirtschaftsgeschichte
	Technik ► Fahrzeugbau / Schiffbau
ISBN-10	0-8018-9485-9 / 0801894859
ISBN-13	978-0-8018-9485-5 / 9780801894855
Zustand	Neuware