Framing Production:Technology, Culture, and Change in the British Bicycle Industry

March 2008
6 x 9, 238 pp., 30 illus.
$18.00/£11.95 (PAPER)

ISBN-10:
0-262-68170-6
ISBN-13:
978-0-262-68170-4

Framing Production
Technology, Culture, and Change in the British Bicycle Industry
Paul Rosen

Table of Contents and Sample Chapters

The production of bicycles in Britain and the United States recently suffered severe setbacks. The renowned American Schwinn brand was downgraded to the mass market by its new owners following bankruptcy, and Britain's Raleigh came close to closure because of high debts and poor returns, saved only by a last-minute management buyout. In both cases, market share and credibility were lost to newer, more innovative firms, as well as to a recentering of the global bicycle industry in the Far East.

This book reflects on such changes by setting them within a sociological and historical context. It focuses on the British bicycle industry in the interwar years and in the 1980s and the 1990s--periods characterized by modernization of production and of industrial organization, by changing relations among players in the industry, by new developments in labor relations, and by changes in interactions between markets and product design. In particular, it traces the fortunes of the Raleigh Cycle Company from its beginnings as an innovative young firm, through massive expansion of its products and markets and the assimilation of many of its competitors, into further innovation amid market contraction and management inertia, and finally into a phase of global restructuring that has transformed and reduced its role within the industry.

The book explores the complex ways in which product design, production methods, industrial organization, and the cultures of cycling have interacted to create a succession of sociotechnical frames for the bicycle. At the same time, on an activist level, the book promotes a participatory politics of bicycle technology and a less car-centered view of personal transportation.

About the Author

Paul Rosen is Research Fellow in the Science and Technology Studies Unit at the University of York.


Framing Production
Technology, Culture, and Change in the British Bicycle Industry
Paul Rosen

	Acknowledgments	ix
1	Technology, Culture, and the Politics of the Bicycle Sample Chapter - Download PDF (148 KB)	1
2	The Emergence of the British Bicycle Industry	29
3	Modernization, Competition, and Collaboration in the Sociotechnical Frameof British Mass Cycle Production	41
4	Working for Raleigh: Sociotechnical Change and the Relations of Production	75
5	The Destabilizing of Mass Production: Technological, Organizational, andIndustrial Change	95
6	The Global Flexibilization of the Bicycle	119
	Up the Velorution: Toward a Sociotechnical Frame of the Sustainable Bicycle	155
	Epilogue	181
	Appendix A : Interviewees	185
	Appendix B: Documentary Sources	187
	Appendix C: Significant Events and Artifacts in the History of the Raleigh Cycle Company	193
	Notes	197
	Bibliography	207
	Index