lI 4 BOOK REVIEW FixingMotorcyclesin Post-Repair Societies. Technology, Aesthetics and Gender by Gabriel Jderu (2023) York/Oxford, Berghahn (Politicsof Repair Series, 3), 155pp. Diego Villar ° Ca’Foscari University of Venice This ethnography ofmotorbike repair inand around Romania is built on a fact that inprin- ciple seems indisputable: beyond the strictly vehicular function of motorbikes, their repair and maintenance can serve bothas asource of personal meaning and, atthesame time, apow- erful trigger of social identities. There are several studies on thehistory of motorcycle design (e.g., Rapini2007), aboutthe motorbike as a glamorous object of consumption (Schouten andMcAlexander 1995), about its relationship with age, class or gender affiliations (McDon- ald-Walker 2000), or even aboutthe massive impactof the motorcycle taxi boom across the Global South (Ehebrecht et al. 2018). In this book, instead, Gabriel Jderu chooses to focuson the motorcycle technology itselfand, above all, on its palpable effects on what he calls the “sub- jectivity”of users: personal and community identities, solidarity networks, andmoral values. The author’s interest in motorcycling is firmly grounded in a well-defined historical con- text: the composition, maintenance and evolution of the Romanian motorbike inventory, spanning from the Second World Warto the present day, andencompassing the decades of Soviet domination. Thematically, as its title suggests, thebookcommences with aprecise defi- nition of its subject of study. In tracing the “material biography” (pp. 166-117) that encodes the social life ofthe motorbike, Jderu opts tofocus on a specific aspect often overlooked inthe literature. Indeed, the conventional canon of moto-mobility studies tends to prioritize aspects such as vehicle production, use, and consumption (Pinch and Reimer 2012), relegating repair andmechanical maintenance to a marginal backstage. Thisperspective implies anassumption that motorcycles are always ready, functional, andnever proneto failure or breakdowns. In contrast, thisbook seeks to investigate maintenance and repair to rectify theanalytical neglect of the cognitive agency and embodied mechanical skillsof motorcycle users. According to Jderu, motorcycling involves a relational capacity that goes beyond mere technological ca- pacity, vehicular use andeven representations of consumption, andthat becomes integral to a sociotechnical system that is subtly influenced by thespecific agenda of repair and mainte- nance. In turn, technological innovation affects motorbike cultureitself. Thequestion, then, is to trackthespecific relationships between mechanic knowledge andsociability over time, and howeach context encourages or discourages theacquisition of technological knowledge. TECNOSCIENZA. Italian Journalof Science & Technology Studies © The Author(s) 2024 15(i) pp.165-169 ISSN 2038-3460 Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) DOI: 10.6092/issn.2038-3460/19900 www.tecnoscienza.net