Regulation, Repair, and Transportation Infrastructure

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Drawing on insights from the fields of information science and human-computer interactions, supply chain analysis, and science and technology studies, this project asks how processes of valuation are prioritized or achieved in a single niche secondary market, the used vehicle. The researcher traces the socio-material assemblages and forms of valuation that come together around the purchase, process, maintenance, and repair of vehicles through the exploration of two supply chains for automobiles in differing regulatory contexts. Data from this project will be disseminated to enhance understanding of science and the scientific method among researchers, planners, and public officials engaged in reconciling the demands of effective transportation infrastructures with concerns about public safety and affordability. The project also provides training for undergraduate students in methods of rigorous, scientific data collection and analysis, through summer internships and mentored research experiences.This project explores what values, for reliable transportation, public and road safety, occupational health, and environmental protections, are prioritized and achieved along supply chains and in moments of breakdown and repair. The project follows the supply chains and circulation of vehicles in two contexts, each which regulate imports differently, have varied inventories, supply chains, and regimes of maintenance and repair. Ethnographic methods of shadowing and interviewing will be used to examine the assemblages that keep vehicles on the road as well as the socio-material constraints to doing so, asking what factors (such as differences in regulatory and repair regimes, creativity and innovation in repair and maintenance) contribute to variability of market behavior and the economic viability of these secondary markets. This project approaches the question of value in an open-ended manner, by examining ongoing processes of valuation as they occur along supply chains and during moments of breakdown and repair. Findings from the project will improve economic anthropological and sociological understandings of maintenance and repair networks and processes, planned obsolescence practices, recycling, and the workings of the circular economy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.