Auto Mechanics

by Borg, Kevin L.

• ISBN13: 9780801886065
• ISBN10: 0801886066
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-05-30
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins Univ Pr

Summary

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 persistant anxiety that even today accompanies the prospect of taking one's car in for repair.

Author Biography

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

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction: Technology's Middle Ground	p. 1
The Problem with Chauffeur-Mechanics	p. 13
Ad Hoc Mechanics	p. 31
Creating New Mechanics	p. 53
The Automobile in Public Education	p. 76
Tinkering with Sociotechnical Hierarchies	p. 99
Suburban Paradox: Maintaining Automobility in the Postwar Decades	p. 115
"Check Engine": Technology of Distrust	p. 138
Conclusion: Servants or Savants? Revaluing the Middle Ground	p. 170
Notes	p. 179
Essay on Sources	p. 235
Index	p. 243
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