Regulation, Repair, and Transportation Infrastructure

借鉴信息科学、人机交互、供应链分析和科学技术研究等领域的见解，该项目探讨了如何在二手车这一单一利基二级市场中优先考虑或实现估值过程。研究人员通过探索不同监管环境下的两条汽车供应链，追踪了围绕汽车购买、加工、维护和维修的社会物质组合和估值形式。将传播该项目的数据，以增进研究人员、规划人员和政府官员对科学和科学方法的了解，这些人员负责协调有效运输基础设施的需求与对公共安全和负担能力的关切。该项目还通过暑期实习和指导研究经验，为本科生提供严谨、科学的数据收集和分析方法方面的培训。本项目探讨了在可靠的运输、公共和道路安全、职业健康和环境保护方面，在供应链中以及在故障和维修时应优先考虑和实现哪些价值。该项目跟踪了两种情况下的汽车供应链和流通情况，这两种情况对进口的监管不同，库存、供应链以及维护和维修制度也各不相同。将使用跟踪和访谈的人种学方法来检查使车辆保持在道路上的组合以及这样做的社会物质限制，询问哪些因素（例如监管和维修制度的差异，维修和维护方面的创造力和创新）导致市场行为的可变性和这些二级市场的经济可行性。该项目以开放式的方式处理价值问题，通过检查正在进行的评估过程，因为它们发生在供应链上，在故障和维修的时刻。该项目的研究结果将改善对维护和维修网络和过程、计划淘汰做法、回收利用和循环经济运作的经济人类学和社会学理解。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.