Motorcycling in a Repair Society: A Maintenance and Repair–Centered Approach to Automobility

Abstract

In a departure from car-centered analyses of the automobility systems, this article highlights the importance of motorcycles and motorcycling in the mobility practices of socialist countries. For at least half of the existence of socialist mobility systems, and especially during the 1950s and 1960s, there were more motorcycles on the roads than cars. Motorcycling was important in commuting, for the mobility of lower-ranking administrative personnel in the countryside, and for mass tourism and leisure. Although in that era maintenance and repair practices were equally central to motorcycling and car-driving, the distinction between user-owner and mechanic was much more fluid in the case of motorcyclists. As a result, the centrality of maintenance and repair to socialist-era motorcycling offers an ideal opportunity to enrich current interdisciplinary conversations about breakdown, maintenance, and repair. Building on the car-centered research into maintenance and repair activities, I add additional material on the nature, types, and complexity of such practices for motorcycling. I outline nine forms of material engagement with motorcycles that reference, but transcend, the current dichotomies between necessity and pleasure, the formal and the informal, the technical and the aesthetic, and the repair of existing objects and the creation of new ones.