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<div class="moz-text-html" lang="x-unicode"> Call for papers<br>
<b>Histories of Technology’s Persistence: Repair, Reuse and
Disposal</b> <br>
Workshop at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital
History (C2DH), University of Luxembourg<br>
7-8 December 2018<br>
Submission deadline: 2 July 2018<br>
<br>
The everyday use of technology involves practices of maintenance
and repair but also raises questions of reuse and removal,
dismantling and disposal. According to Stephen Graham and Nigel
Thrift (2007: 19), repair and maintenance constitute “the engine
room of modern economies and societies”. The current “maintainers
network” (Russell/Vinsel 2018) argues for an emphasis on
maintenance instead of the traditional focus on invention and
innovation in the field of history of technology. Indeed, we still
know surprisingly little about the history of repair, reuse and
disposal practices. In his plea for a history of
“technology-in-use”, David Edgerton (2008: 81) summarised:
“Unfortunately we are not in a position to give an overview of the
main trends in the history of maintenance and repair. Has
maintenance as a proportion of output gone up or down? Where there
has been a trade-off between initial cost and maintenance, what
have producers and consumers gone for?” We still lack answers to
these questions, which is why we are organising a workshop to
bring together historians of maintenance and repair. <br>
<br>
Furthermore, we want to combine our focus on maintenance and
repair with issues of reuse, dismantling and disposal. Repair,
reuse and removal are closely interlinked phenomena related to the
lives and persistence of technologies, and they go beyond the
question of innovation: When technical artefacts become old and
outworn, decisions have to be taken as to whether it is necessary,
worthwhile or possible to maintain and repair them, to reuse or
dismantle them for different purposes, or to get rid of them. And
these decisions depend among other factors on the availability of
second-hand markets, repair infrastructures and dismantling or
disposal facilities. This is why cultures of repair should be
studied with regard to the life span of technical artefacts and
their possible “second” or “third lives” and “afterlives”
(Krebs/Schabacher/Weber 2018). Steve Jackson recently argued for
“broken world thinking”: Historians of technology should take
“erosion, breakdown, and decay, rather than novelty, growth, and
progress, as (...) starting points” for their research and
narratives (Jackson 2014: 221). In a similar vein, but with an
emphasis on technology’s persistence, we would like to stress the
long lives of old technologies whose form and duration has been
shaped by maintenance, repair, reuse and disposal infrastructures,
by their availability or absence, and by the related economies of
waste, recycling and reuse. It is generally assumed that practices
of repair and reuse have gradually declined along with the rise of
20th-century mass production, mass consumption and throw-away
societies. However, it is safe to argue that maintenance and
repair have not become obsolete in modern consumer societies. For
one, production and infrastructure facilities are in constant need
of maintenance to keep them running. And even the spread of new
consumer technologies such as automobiles, television sets and
household appliances has greatly depended on maintenance and
repair services as well as second-hand markets and refurbishment
shops (Krebs/Schabacher/Weber 2018). Moreover, while cultures of
repair have declined in certain areas, they have thrived in
others, as can be seen by the post-war “do-it-yourself” and the
current “iFixit” movements. Seen from a global perspective, repair
and reuse markets have not disappeared, but have been outsourced –
along with toxic waste disposal and recycling practices – to
regions far away from the places of technologies’ first-time
usage.<br>
<br>
In short, the aim of our international workshop is to bring
together the growing scholarship in the history of repair, reuse,
dismantling and disposal. Some of the questions we would like to
address are:<br>
<br>
- What can we learn from microhistories of repair, reuse and
waste disposal? And from a macrohistorical perspective: How have
the economies of repair, reuse and removal changed over time?<br>
- What links can be identified between the rise and decline of
maintenance and disposal systems and societal developments? For
instance, how has the governance of maintenance and disposal
changed (or not) between pre-industrial, industrial and
post-industrial societies?<br>
- What role has maintenance played in the development and
momentum of technical infrastructures and large technological
systems?<br>
- Who are the agents and experts of maintenance, reuse and
disposal, and what socio-technical positions do they hold?<br>
- How have the supply and pricing of spare parts, the
repairability of technical designs, legal questions of maintenance
and warranty, as well as disposal requirements changed over time?
What role have standards and regulations played in shaping
maintenance and disposal regimes?<br>
- What is the role of a historiography of maintenance, repair,
reuse and waste disposal? Should historians contribute to the
current repair movement and in what ways might they contribute to
a more sustainable world?<br>
<br>
Travel and accommodation costs of invited workshop participants
will be covered by the C2DH.<br>
<br>
The workshop will be based on pre-circulated papers (approx. 4,000
words; deadline 16 November 2018). Workshop contributions will be
published in an edited volume (print and open access ebook).<br>
<br>
Please send proposals (350 words) to <a
class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated"
href="mailto:stefan.krebs@uni.lu">stefan.krebs@uni.lu</a>;
deadline 2 July 2018.<br>
<br>
Organisers: Stefan Krebs (Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and
Digital History), Heike Weber (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)<br>
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