Maintenance & Repair in Science and Technology Studies

This essay contains an overview on worldwide researches on Maintenance and Repair topics in Science and Technology Studies

Maintenance work and the performativity of urban inscriptions: the case of Paris subway signs

International audienceUrban inscriptions are performative devices that play a crucial part in urban assemblages. They mark sites, give places a name, designate directions. This paper questions such performativity by investigating the design and maintenance of subway signs in Paris. Studying backstage activities rather than user tactics, it shows that the semiotic production of space is mainly played out in standardization processes that are both oriented towards signs immutability and fueled by a daily consideration for their vulnerability. Such a posture allows us to take full account of the ontological variations of signs (which can be, for example, stable or unstable, consistent or fragile, immutable or mutable). Maintenance work, through which the agency of urban inscriptions is partially shaped, ensures the articulation of such a multiplicity

Une infrastructure élusive. Aménagements cyclables et troubles de la description dans OpenStreetMap

National audienceThis article investigates the practice of participative mapping by examining the creation of a geographic database on infrastructure for bicycles. Based on the exploration of OpenStreetMap discussions, the authors draw up an inventory of problems that amateur cartographers encounter with regard to description. Prior to the stabilization of categories, the contributors' doubts reveal an elusive urban infrastructure that contrasts with the system which is ordered and structured by policies. These doubts crystallize around three levels of resistance to the creation of a database: first, in discussions, infrastructure for bicycles seems to be heterogeneous and changing; second, it is already organized in versions that are difficult to link up to one another; and, third, it is actualized in users' practices that are difficult to break away from. By limiting the analysis to problems of description, this article highlights a particular aspect of the contributors' experience: collective inquiry at its most open. In parallel with a perspective that favours agreement, the role of procedures in debates, or the contributors' motivation, this approach serves to document the phase of doubt and trial characterizing exploration as such, before order is established.Cet article examine la pratique de la cartographie participative en étudiant la fabrique d'une base de données géographiques qui recense les aménagements cyclables. À travers l'exploration de liste de discussions d'OpenStreetMap, il propose un inventaire des troubles de la description que rencontrent les cartographes amateurs. En amont de la stabilisation des catégories, les doutes des contributeurs donnent à voir une infrastructure urbaine élusive, en contraste avec son caractère ordonné et structuré par des politiques publiques. Ces doutes se cristallisent autour de trois niveaux de résistance à la mise en base de données. Dans les discussions, les aménagements cyclables apparaissent hétérogènes et changeants ; déjà ordonnés dans des versions difficiles à articuler ; actualisés dans des pratiques d'usagers dont il est difficile de se détacher. En arrêtant le mouvement de l'analyse aux troubles de la description, cet article met en lumière un aspect particulier de l'expérience des contributeurs : l'enquête collective dans ses moments les plus ouverts. En paralèlle d'une perspective qui privilégierait la dynamique de l'accord, le rôle des procédures dans les débats, ou encore la motivation des contributeurs, cette posture permet de documenter le temps du doute et l'épreuve que constitue, avant la mise en ordre, l'exploration en tant que telle

Material Ordering and the Care of Things

http://www.csi.mines-paristech.fr/Items/WorkingPapers/Download/DLWP.php?wp=WP_CSI_034.pdfCSI WORKING PAPER 034Drawing on an ethnographic study of the installation and maintenance of Paris subway wayfinding system, this article attempts to discuss and specify previous claims that highlight stability and immutability as crucial aspects of material ordering processes. Though in designersʼ productions (guidelines, graphic manuals...), subway signs have been standardized and their consistency has been invested in to stabilize riders environment, they appear as fragile and transforming entities in the hands of maintenance workers. These two situated accounts are neither opposite nor paradoxical: they enact different versions of subway signs, the stabilization of which goes through the acknowledgment of their vulnerability. Practices that deal with material fragility are at the center of what authors propose, following Annemarie Mol and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, to term a care of things. Foregrounding such a care of things is a way to surface a largely overlooked dimension of material ordering and to renew how maintainability issues are generally tackled

From Manuscript Evaluation to Article Valuation: The Changing Technologies of Journal Peer Review

International audienceBorn in the seventeenth century, journal peer review is an extremely diverse technology, constantly torn between two often incompatible goals: the validation of manuscripts conceived as a collective industrial-like reproducible process performed to assert scientific statements, and the dissemination of articles considered as a means to spur scientific discussion, raising controversies and civically challenging a state of knowledge. Such a situation is particularly conducive to clarifying the processes of valuation and evaluation in journal peer review. In this article, such processes are considered as specific tests in order to emphasize the uncertain properties of pre-tests manuscripts. On the one hand, evaluation tests are examined at the core of the validation of manuscripts, such as defining the coordination of judging instances (editor-in-chief, editorial committee, outside reviewers) or controlling the modalities of inter-knowledge between reviewers and authors. They are also studied regarding the dissemination of articles, notably through the contemporary conception of a continuing evaluation test termed " post publication peer review ". On the other hand, valuation tests are both part of the validation of manuscripts, such as the weighting of different judgments of the same manuscript and the tensions that these hierarchies cause, and of the dissemination of articles, such as attention metrics recording the uses of articles. The conclusion sketches out how the articulation of these different tests has recently empowered readers as a new key judging instance for dissemination and for validation, potentially transforming the definition of peers, and thus the whole process of journal peer review

Material Ordering and the Care of Things

International audienceDrawing on an ethnographic study of the installation and maintenance of Paris subway wayfinding system, this article attempts to discuss and specify previous claims that highlight stability and immutability as crucial aspects of material ordering processes. Though in designers' productions (such as guidelines or graphic manuals), subway signs have been standardized and their consistency has been invested in to stabilize riders' environment, they appear as fragile and transforming entities in the hands of maintenance workers. These two situated accounts are neither opposite nor paradoxical: they enact different versions of subway signs, the stabilization of which goes through the acknowledgment of their vulnerability. Practices that deal with material fragility are at the center of what we propose, following Annemarie Mol and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, to term a care of things. Foregrounding such a care of things is a way to surface a largely overlooked dimension of material ordering and to renew how maintainability issues are generally tackled. Keyword

Une écriture entre ordre et désordre. Le relevé de maintenance comme description normative

National audienceCet article explore le rôle de la fabrication et de la circulation des relevés dans la maintenance en tant que part scripturale du travail collectif de réordonnancement. S'appuyant sur une ethnographie des activités de maintenance dans un département de la RATP, il montre que la pratique du relevé constitue une épreuve à mi-chemin entre improvisations et connaissance de la norme. Chaque relevé produit une description normative du monde : une représentation juste de la situation problématique qui, dans le même mouvement, instruit et encadre les opérations successives de l'intervention qu'il initie. S'y jouent donc à la fois l'organisation séquentielle des opérations de maintenance et une part de la réduction des écarts entre le monde tel qu'il est et tel qu'il devrait être. Cette épreuve ne fait pas qu'aligner systématiquement ordre attendu et désordre constaté : les différences dans la fabrique des relevés instaurent des rapports contrastés à la norme et articulent de façon spécifique la position de chacun dans l'agencement des opérations

The dance of maintenance and the dynamics of urban assemblages

At the crossroads of human geography and actor-network theory, ample research has been centered around the notion of assemblage as a means to redefine some of the traditional themes of urban studies. This stream of research has called for a true study of the sociotechnical complexity of cities, from the largest infrastructures to the most everyday objects. Wayfinding systems are paradigmatic of urban assemblages. Intimately linked to urban fabric (architecture, streets, highways, and practices themselves), they play a crucial role in the production of cities as both material and informational environments. But to simply remain in place and thus truly contribute to the graphical ordering of urban settings, signs take work. In this text, we first foreground the importance of maintenance work in the daily existence of wayfinding systems – a work that remains largely overlooked in the studies of urban assemblages. Second, we investigate the day-to-day repair activities to show that they consist in reassembling and disassembling operations. Such an approach notably makes possible to apprehend urban assemblages in their daily dynamics and to investigate the ecology of visible and invisible in which their repair takes place

L'écologie informationnelle des lieux publics: Le cas de la signalétique du métro

Pour décrire l'avènement des nouvelles technologies de l'information et de la communication, deux éléments sont souvent mis en avant : le caractère personnel des outils et leur portabilité. La première souligne les enjeux d'appropriation et d'interaction « homme/machine », tandis que la seconde renvoie à l'émergence de nouvelles formes de mobilité. Si ces dimensions sont es- sentielles, elles ne doivent cependant pas éclipser les transformations que les environnements eux-mêmes ont connues. La société de l'information prend aussi corps dans des dispositifs in- formationnels ouverts, inscrits durablement dans des lieux que nous traversons quotidienne- ment. L'espace public est, en grande partie, constitué de ce type de dispositifs, qui s'appuient sur des technologies d'affichage très différentes, et sont les ingrédients incontournables de « l'atmosphère de nos démocraties »

Parasite Users? The Volunteer Mapping of Cycling Infrastructures

International audienceThis chapter aims at understanding the place of users in the online discussions between Openstreetmap contributors who map cycling infrastructures. Drawing on an analysis of the mailing list of the French forum of Openstreetmap, we show that contributors deal with different kinds of users' instantiations. We describe how these contributors try to avoid any attachement to one or another category of users, which would threaten their ideal of "universality"