2023-10-25 08:51:16
” As [Giovanni] Morelli, [Sherlock] Holmes et [Sigmund] Freud, maintenance people pay attention to what is usually overlooked in order to find telltale signs in the material,” write Jérôme Denis, professor of sociology at Mines Paris-PSL, and David Pointille, research director at CNRS, in The Care of Things. Maintenance policies (La Découverte, “Philosophical grounds”, 2022).
This vast essay is an invitation to travel and reflect on the essential role of maintenance in our daily lives, in businesses, as well as in public policies.
The work begins like a novel, with an ordinary day described through its tiny malfunctions and its ordinary traces of wear and tear, a dripping tap, a tangle of patched cables, a bicycle being serviced, etc.
The authors, both attached to the center for sociology of innovation at Mines Paris-PSL, give a large place to stories, such as “source of knowledge about the world”, with the ambition to change the way we look at the relationships humans have with things and thus reveal “the political significance of maintenance activities”.
By taking the wear and tear of things as a starting point, from the enameled panels of the RATP to the clock of the Pantheon via a bridge in Philadelphia, they demonstrate that being preoccupied with what is not an event forces us to observe the world with more attention to read everything that is at stake in a relationship, including the relationship to time. Maintenance, beyond upkeep, highlights undesirable disruptions for business continuity and sustainable progress.
“The Care of Things. Maintenance policies »by David Pontille and Jérôme Denis, La Découverte, “Philosophical grounds”, 376 p., €23.
“The Care of Things. Maintenance policies”, by David Pontille and Jérôme Denis, La Découverte, “Philosophical grounds”, 376 pages, 23 euros.
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