Overview
"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."
Full Product Details
Author: Kevin L. Borg (Professor, James Madison University)
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Imprint: Johns Hopkins University Press
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.30cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.544kg
ISBN: 9780801886065
ISBN 10: 0801886066
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 27 July 2007
Recommended Age: From 17
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
,
Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
<p>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 (01/01/2008)
<p>Kevin Borg's Auto Mechanics is a finely researched, rich social history.--Thomas A. Castillo Enterprise and Society (01/01/0001)
Kevin Borg's Auto Mechanics is a finely researched, rich social history. -- Thomas A. Castillo, Enterprise and Society
Author Information
Kevin L. Borg is an associate professor of history at James Madison University.
