Auto Mechanics
Technology and Expertise in Twentieth—Century America
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.
"Auto Mechanics provides a superbly researched, engaging look into the profession that's near and dear to us all." -- John Lypen, Motor Magazine
"Borg's own work in the repair shop infuses the study with insights that I am sure would escape anyone without the experience he has had... His questions are anything but academic." -- Steve Thompson, AutoWeek
"He's... provided a source of inspiration to those who would like to work to improve the industry's image, recruitment and retention." -- Steve Relyea, Import Automotive Parts & Accessories
"This is an excellent work that has much to contribute to our understanding of the automobile, technology, and wider trends in American history." -- Amy Gangloff, Michigan Historical Review
"In seven richly detailed chapters, theoretically sophisticated and attentive to nuances of race, class, and gender, Borg analyzes the changing background, training, and expertise of auto mechanics over the course of the twentieth century." -- Joseph J. Corn, Technology and Culture
"A wonderfully insightful study of the emergence and evolution of a contingent occupation and the meaning that that position had on both the people who did the work and those who procured the workers' services." -- Lisa M. Fine, Labor History
"Auto Mechanics is an important contribution to U.S. labor and economic history and to our understanding of the ways that the mass production of automobiles changed working life." -- Andrew E. Kersten, Journal of American History
"Well—written and well—researched... will be read with interest by all scholars of modern America." -- David Blanke, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
"Auto Mechanics sheds new light on the history of the automobile that top—down and bottom—up studies alike have missed. Call it a 'history from the middle—out,' if you will." -- Walter L. Elden, IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
"Kevin Borg's Auto Mechanics is a finely researched, rich social history." -- Thomas A. Castillo, Enterprise and Society
"Borg's Auto Mechanics will strongly appeal not only to those with an interest in this particular group, but also more generally to scholars working on the connections among material culture, labor, and the history of technology." -- Robert Buerglener, American Quarterly
"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
Kevin L. Borg is an associate professor of history at James Madison University.Related Books:
The Business of Speed: The Hot Rod Industry in America, 1915–1990
David N. Lucsko
