Theorising the everyday work of cycle mechanics

Abstract

Drawing on interim findings from an ethnography of a cycle mechanics’ workshop, this article demonstrates how the work of the mechanics rests on not only specific and contextualised craft expertise but also on distributed networks of both people and things, within which highly specialist instances of expertise or competence manifest alongside more generic, even mundane, instances of subjectivised, experiential knowledge or habit. Through an analysis of ethnographic data using a composite theoretical framework, designed as a mosaic consisting of three different but equal components, the article provides descriptions and theorisations of everyday work that reconcile contextualised situated accounts of craft expertise with the wider sociotechnological and cultural networks within which such contextualised spaces are located.