Kulturen des Reparierens

Reparieren und Instandhalten sind ökonomisch wie kulturell zentrale Praktiken im »Leben« technischer Dinge und Infrastrukturen. Der Band rückt diese bislang wenig untersuchten Tätigkeiten in den Vordergrund und fragt nach den Wissensformen der unterschiedlichen Kulturen des Reparierens. Die Expertisen und politischen Ambitionen menschlicher Akteure finden dabei ebenso Berücksichtigung wie die Eigendynamik der Dinge. Die Beiträge untersuchen Praktiken wie die Uhr- oder Computerreparatur sowie Räume wie die Wohnung und das Krankenhaus, das Repair Café und die Stadt des Globalen Südens. Nicht zuletzt geht es um die Frage, inwiefern Reparieren und reparaturfreundliches Design zu mehr Nachhaltig…

Kulturen des Reparierens und die Lebensdauer der Dinge

Off the grid. Touristische Idyllen der Entnetzung

Abstract The article examines the relation of tourism and idyll in regard to the mediation of the tourist experience. Digital detox tourism and off grid tourism are two examples of contemporary tourism – including their respective practices and ways of promotion – that associate certain cultural stereotypes with the idyll. While digital detox tourism promises independence from the digital world, off grid tourism detaches the tourist from infrastructure and supplies. Paradoxically, the advertising of these types of ‘disconnection’ makes use of the same linked infrastructures that tourists are bound to leave behind. Thus, this article reveals the ways in which digital detox tourism and off gr…

Staged Wrecks: The Railroad Crash Between Infrastructural Lesson and Amusement

To explore infrastructures and publics from a historical perspective, in this paper I will focus on the entangled development of transport infrastructures in the nineteenth century on the one hand and the rise of amusement cultures on the other. More specifically, I will examine a phenomenon that became popular at US State Fairs at the end of the century, namely staged railroad crashes with two steam locomotives.

Time and Technology:

By focusing the temporalities of care, the chapter analyzes a special relation between time and technology that underlies the making and persisting of media and infrastructures. I propose to differentiate between four types of care practices with corresponding different temporal patterns that are highly relevant for the functioning of technological systems in the past and present. First, the retrospective response to unforeseen interruptions (repair); second, the prospective routine procedure to prevent all forms of disorder (maintenance); third, a neglect of care that leads to devaluating infrastructure (abandonment) as well as—fourth—forms of revaluation in changing contexts (repurposing)…