Workshop Report: Histories of Maintenance and Repair (Day 1)

Following recent calls for a “history of technology-in-use” (D. Edgerton), “broken-world thinking” (S. Jackson) and a history of technology “after innovation” (A. Russell & L. Vinsel), the international workshop “Histories of Maintenance and Repair” brought together philosophers, anthropologists and historians of technology to discuss the implications of our repair studies, with the aim of better understanding different actor groups through their creative interaction with technology, their maintenance of large technological systems, and beyond. The workshop was organised by the FNR-funded research team “Repairing Technology – Fixing Society. History of Repair in Luxembourg” and took place on 2 and 3 September 2021 in a hybrid format at the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) and online.

After a short welcome and introduction by STEFAN KREBS (University of Luxembourg), MARK THOMAS YOUNG (University of Bergen) presented his paper on “Technology in Process: Maintenance and the Lives of Artifacts”. He argued that the neglect of maintenance and repair in the social studies of technology could be traced back to ancient Greek philosophy in the concept of substance ontology. This perspective focuses on the becoming and then stable being of man-made objects, and he proposed that this focus on substance might be an important factor in understanding the often discussed problem of the history of technology’s fascination with innovation rather than use and maintenance. If one understands an object to be complete once produced, it is easy to see that researching its becoming is more important than its mundane existence. Yet as it is the latter that historians and philosophers of repair are interested in, Young proposed a shift from substance to process. By defining an object’s nature as constantly in motion, as processual instead of stable, he proposed a (philosophically) grounded case for researching its existence and interconnectedness throughout its entire lifespan.

In his presentation “Innovation in Maintenance: Technical Achievements of Cleanroom Operators and Maintainers in Korean Semiconductor Production Lines, 1980s – 2000s”, Sangwoon Yoo presented his insights into what it means to maintain an industrial production infrastructure of semiconductors in South Korea. In presenting cleanrooms, the high demands on technicians in terms of cleanliness and hygiene and the long working hours, he portrayed the field as a high-pressure environment that did not tolerate any serious interruptions in production. While the literature on more mundane maintenance and repair practices focuses on tinkering, workarounds and the importance of tacit knowledge, Yoo presented a series of strict recipes that are continuously engrained into the everyday practices of maintainers. In more than one way it is the story of the undervalued but highly relied upon shop or research assistant, transported into a decidedly high-tech environment.

The next panel was entitled “Maintaining High-Tech (and Power)”. SANGWOON YOO (Hanbat National University) and LILIANA GIL (The New School) discussed their findings on either end of the spectrum of becoming and being as it was laid out by Mark Thomas Young.

In his presentation “Innovation in Maintenance: Technical Achievements of Cleanroom Operators and Maintainers in Korean Semiconductor Production Lines, 1980s – 2000s”, Sangwoon Yoo presented his insights into what it means to maintain an industrial production infrastructure of semiconductors in South Korea. In presenting cleanrooms, the high demands on technicians in terms of cleanliness and hygiene and the long working hours, he portrayed the field as a high-pressure environment that did not tolerate any serious interruptions in production. While the literature on more mundane maintenance and repair practices focuses on tinkering, workarounds and the importance of tacit knowledge, Yoo presented a series of strict recipes that are continuously engrained into the everyday practices of maintainers. In more than one way it is the story of the undervalued but highly relied upon shop or research assistant, transported into a decidedly high-tech environment.

Liliana Gil then investigated the humdrum of everyday life with readily available technology in her presentation “The Brazilian ‘Electronic Paradise’. Repair Work, Expertise, and Global Connections in Santa Efigênia”. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, she explained that in this field, training in the maintenance and repair of mobile phones involved an unromantic and highly rationalised approach. She was able to show the who, what and why of professional phone repair. Training at the private repair school “Prime” in Santa Efigênia is very structured and goal oriented. By challenging the existing anthropological literature for its romanticised understanding of tacit learning, she focused on the transfer of explicit knowledge in an environment that is neatly set in the neoliberal present. Becoming a phone repair professional promises a steady income for many people in the “Global South”. Yet it is not a creative approach to technology out of need, but rather the task of being rational, quick and clean in repairing people’s phones.

In the third panel, “Off the Grid: Everyday Repair Practices”, KOSTAS LATOUFIS (National Technical University of Athens) and ARISTOTLE TYMPAS (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), and YOVANNA PINEDA (University of Central Florida) respectively discussed the makeshift repair practices of wind turbines in Scotland and the socio-political environment and implications of farming machines in Argentina.

Kostas Latoufis and Aristotle Tympas took on the story of innovation, or in their words “design knowledge”, through maintenance and repair but focused on the user as the professional. In their presentation, entitled “Makeshift Engineering: Repairing Machines, Crafting Knowledge, and Maintaining Relationships with Locally Manufactured Small Wind Turbines in Scoraig, Scotland”, this practical knowledge stems from day-to-day interactions with these turbines in an extreme (windy) environment that is ideally suited to wind power. When the small settlement of Scoraig, on a remote Scottish peninsula, needed to be electrified in the late 1970s, the community quickly adopted a DIY approach to building their own turbines and spread their knowledge in self-published manuals to anyone interested. This practice, which involves a lot of pride and humour – often expressed in their makeshift style of their maintenance and repair and the community’s understanding of their externally granted expert tinkering status – led to fertile ground for new designs of their own, or for industrial products. By following their story from its humble beginnings to the stage where members of the community were asked to advise leading companies on their work, Latoufis and Tympas showed that it might still be valid to learn from a creative technological engagement as a promising path to knowledge. Even without exoticising and looking for these practices in the “Global South”, where they are often a necessity and not a choice, DIY practices and self-education can be found all over the world, and their results are not to be dismissed.

In the last presentation of the first day, entitled “Gendered Spaces of Repair, Maintenance, and Knowledge Production in Argentina, Twentieth Century”, Yovanna Pineda discussed her fieldwork in South America. Based on her own fieldwork and an abundance of historical sources, her presentation focused on the social hierarchy and relationship of workers and designers in the use and production of combine-harvesters, as well as women’s role in this gendered environment. These peoples’ lives all meet around their machinery, its importation into the country, and especially its adaptation to local needs. Instead of researching a top-down process of knowledge transfer, Pineda managed to focus on the detailed processes brought about by the new equipment and the socio-technological shift. In her story, manuals for the machines were rare, and therefore so was the knowledge imbued in them. Bringing many aspects of the other presentations together, she explained how the success of this once foreign and now domesticated machinery was solely based on its users and designers (farmers and blacksmiths) working with them, and thereby gaining an understanding of them. Yet the two groups were not regarded as equal. Where the designers had their workbooks, the users had their laburo – both detailed documents on the machines but with dramatic differences in style and context. Set between these poles, Pineda further discussed the role of women in the field. Although they have traditionally important roles in everyday farm life, their lack of visibility in relation to new technological developments needs to be noted. Yet Pineda’s fieldwork revealed that their role did indeed involve much more than becoming the harvest queen, being shown off with the machines, but that they tended to be administrators and contractors behind the scenes.

Follow this link to discover the second day of the workshop.