The hour of the Mechanic Bricoleur
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31048/1852.4826.v17.n1.43665Keywords:
Motorcycles, Mobilities, Technology, Repair Studies, GlobalisationAbstract
The essay analyses a recent ethnography on the repair and maintenance of motorcycles in Romania from the Second World War to the present day. Bearing in mind the very definition of the object, the analytical and conceptual premises of the anthropology of motorcycle culture, the methodological strategies that document it and some of the most significant particularities of the post-Soviet historical context and of “the post-repair society”, it is possible to rethink the apparently technical phenomenon of motorcycle mechanics as an authentic total social fact that modulates a set of geopolitical, economic, technical, identity, symbolic, aesthetic, age and gender variables. In addition, some lines of comparative exploration with other current studies on ethnomechanics, mobilities and particularly the contemporary dissemination of motorcycles in different cultural areas are proposed, which may shed light on the possible relational configurations between technology, environment and society.
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