Focused on the dynamics of innovation, Science and Technology Studies have left aside the more ordinary aspect of sociotechnical assemblages, neglecting the activities dedicated to ensuring their stability and their persistence. In recent years, these activities have however become increasingly important. With the deepening of the climate crisis and the amplification of heath crises, issues related to the sustainability, continuity in activity and life span of things and people have gradually imposed themselves as a counterpoint to the obsessions with innovation and the omnipresent figure of disruption. What can these concerns teach us about the way of existence of scientific and technical devices, beyond the innovation process? How are the conditions of permanence and sustainability organized in different fields? How are time and futures problematized?
Extending the works on valuation devices, researches on the history and the use of the accounting technique of actualization of the future (discounting) show how duration and long term have progressively been problematized from an investment perspective. Actualization leads to think of time as a depreciation, whose technical and political rationale is crucial to question.
The CSI is one of the places where Maintenance and Repair Studies have recently emerged as an interdisciplinary research area that explores the variety of activities dedicated to the maintenance of technical objects, from small objects of daily consumption to the most complex infrastructures. In the past few years, the political, technical and material issues involved in urban maintenance have been areas of particular interest. More recently, the CSI has initiated a research partnership with the Institut pour la recherche appliquée et l’expérimentation en génie civil (IREX) [Institute for Applied Research and Experimentation in Civil Engineering] and Routes de France to study the contemporary transformations in the asset management of transport infrastructures.
One of the peculiarities of the CSI’s work on this subject is their desire not to artificially separate what comes down to the maintenance of things on the one hand and the support for humans on the other. On the contrary, the challenge is to question the modalities of care in the broad sense of the term, which combines care for artifacts, care for the environment and care for people.
Research projects
GESPARE – La gestion patrimoniale des réseaux d’eau en France [Water stewardship in France]
Show abstract »The aim of the GESPARE study was to provide additional elements to this diagnosis of the state of the networks and to document the reality of localized asset management practices. It has been carried out in a dual context: the gradual implementation of the territorial reorganization of the NOTRE law, which has led to inter-municipal authorities taking on the responsibility for water management ( along with the reduction in the number of drinking water services since 2010, from 15,367 to 11,263 drinking water syndicates between 2010 and 2017), and the holding of the Assises de l’eau [a consultation body of local elected officials and water stakeholders at the national level and through the basin committees at the local level]. The former represent both opportunities and challenges for the implementation of an asset management policy, while the latter have provided an opportunity to publicize certain debates and clarify certain arguments as to what the term asset management refers to. More specifically, this study aims to identify vigilance points for the deployment of ambitious heritage management and to list the relevant initiatives and good practices implemented in this respect. Its aim is therefore to grasp the diversity of the issues currently associated with a field that is still in the process of being set up and to document specific cases, as close as possible to their specific features, in order to reflect the eminently local nature of water management. Organized in two distinct phases, one on a national scale, the other on a local case study basis, the study was based on a qualitative research methodology in the tradition of institutional ethnography developed by Dorothy Smith and her colleagues. This investigation consisted in a critical analysis of existing databases, a study of public documentation and expert reports in the field, in-depth interviews with various stakeholders and participant observations during two local water management events and within two working groups of the Assises de l’eau.
Contact: Jérôme Denis
L’effacement des graffiti à Paris [Graffiti Removal in Paris]
Show abstract »Contact: Jérôme Denis, David Pontille
Seminars
Digital Environmental Policies
The seminar is organized by Clément Marquet (CSI, Mines Paris / PSL, i3) and Sophie Quinton (Inria, GDS EcoInfo), as part of the Politiques environnementales du numérique [Digital Environmental Policies] working group of the GDR Internet, AI and Society. For the past few years, the environmental consequences of digital technologies have been the subject of increasing attention, calling into question the promise of a convergence between ecological and digital transition. More about »
Maintaining/Supporting: fragility as a mode of existence
Research Seminar (2017-2019) organized by Jérôme Denis, Antoine Hennion, Anne-Sophie Haeringer and David Pontille. The seminar starts with one observation: the current proliferation of research that deals with care, or attention. These studies investigate the climate or Gaia, the art of repairing objects or conserving artworks, the maintenance of technical networks […] More about »
PhD theses
Theses in progress
Hafid Ait Sidi Hammou, Le rôle des données dans la maintenance durable des réseaux publics / The role of data in the sustainable maintenance of public networks
Roman Solé-Pomies, Gestion patrimoniale et anticipation des nouveaux usages : quelle gouvernance locale pour des infrastructures routières durables ? / Maintaining and Foreseeing New Uses: Mutations in Local Governance for Sustainable Road Infrastructures
Solène Sarnowski, L’accompagnement numérique des enquêtes des personnes vers la transition écologique / The digital accompaniment of people’s investigations aimed at the ecological transition
Defended theses
Evan A. Fisher, 2020, Humanitarian presence. Locating the global choices of Doctors Without Borders / L’humanitaire au présent. Localiser les choix globaux de Médecins Sans Frontières
Mathieu Baudrin, 2018, Maintenir la technologie aérosol et son industrie : une enquête sur les collectifs industriels (1958-2017) / Maintaining aerosol technology and its industry : an inquiry into the industrial collectives (1958-2017)
Publications
Jérôme Denis et David Pontille, 2022, Le soin des choses. Politiques de la maintenance. La Découverte.
Clément Marquet, 2021, Rendre accessible par les données. Cartographies amateures et politiques d’accessibilité des transports, in Noémie Rapegno, Cristina Popescu (dir.), Géographies du handicap, Maisons des Sciences de l’Homme Associées.
Jérôme Denis, David Pontille, 2019, Why do maintenance and repair matter?, in Anders Blok, Ignacio Farías, Celia Roberts (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Actor-Network Theory, Routledge, 283-293.
Guillaume Carnino, Clément Marquet, 2019, Du mythe de l’automatisation au savoir-faire des petites mains : une histoire du data center par la panne, Artefact, (11), p.163-190.
Liliana Doganova, 2018, Discounting and the making of the future: on uncertainty in forest management and drug development, in Jens Beckert, Richard Bronk (Eds.), Uncertain futures: Imaginaries, Narratives and Calculation in the Economy, Oxford University Press, 278-297.
Antoine Hennion, 2017, Attachments, you say? … How a concept collectively emerges in one research group, Journal of Cultural Economy, 10 (1), 112-121.