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Repairing Infrastructures

Christopher R. Henke Benjamin Sims

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English
MIT Press
13 October 2020
An investigation of the causes and consequences of the strange, ambivalent, and increasingly central role of infrastructure repair in modern life.

An investigation of the causes and consequences of the strange, ambivalent, and increasingly central role of infrastructure repair in modern life.

Infrastructures-communication, food, transportation, energy, and information-are all around us, and their enduring function and influence depend on the constant work of repair. In this book, Christopher Henke and Benjamin Sims explore the causes and consequences of the strange, ambivalent, and increasingly central role of infrastructure repair in modern life. Henke and Sims offer examples, from local to global, to investigate not only the role of repair in maintaining infrastructures themselves but also the social and political orders that are created and sustained through them. Repair can encompass not only the kind of work we most commonly associate with the term but also any set of practices aimed at restoring a sense of normalcy or credibility to the places and institutions we inhabit in everyday life. From cases as diverse as the repair of building systems on a university campus, a conflict over retrofitting a bridge while protecting murals painted on it, and the global challenge posed by climate change, Henke and Sims assemble a range of examples to illustrate key conceptual points about the role of repair. They show that repair is an essential if often overlooked aspect of understanding the broader impact and politics of infrastructures. Understanding repair helps us better understand infrastructures and the scope of their influence on our lives.
By:   ,
Imprint:   MIT Press
Country of Publication:   United States
Dimensions:   Height: 229mm,  Width: 152mm, 
Weight:   368g
ISBN:   9780262539708
ISBN 10:   0262539705
Pages:   192
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Inactive
Acknowledgements Chapter One. Introduction: A Toolkit for Understanding Infrastructure and Repair Chapter Two. Cold Offices and Hot Airplanes: Local Negotiations Over Repair Chapter Three. Bridging Scales: The Local Negotiation of Systemic Repair Chapter Four. From Versailles to Armageddon: Building and Maintaining the Infrastructural State Chapter Five. Confronting the Anthropocene: Reflexive Repair in an Age of Global Infrastructures Notes Bibliography Index

Christopher R. Henke is Associate Professor of Sociology at Colgate University. He is the author of Cultivating Science, Harvesting Power (MIT Press). Benjamin Sims is a sociologist and scientist with the Statistical Sciences Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Reviews for Repairing Infrastructures

"""[R]eaders looking for an engaging contribution to the emerging field of repair studies will love this small volume. Henke and Sims introduce many of the current perspectives on repair, maintainers, and the important role they play in society. Furthermore, with their notions of 'repair as maintenance,' 'repair as transformation,' and 'reflexive repair,' they add an interesting new set of concepts to the discussion.""—Technology and Culture"


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